Earlier this week, a friend emailed me to say “I’m having trouble Goggling you” which I thought was an hilarious typo. Turns out it was just a precursor of things to come.

Back in June I wrote a post about muppets representing your personality (June 29, 2008, go look for yourself, I don’t want a pingback in the comments). I chose Beaker. I posted a picture of Beaker. The post got about 25 hits total (and 3 great comments). 

Until Friday.

Apparently, judging from my statistics, Friday was when the picture that I posted of Beaker made it to the #1 spot when searching for an image of Beaker on Google Images.

So, since Friday, I’ve had about 75 hits on that post. And it’s still going up.

It took me a few scenarios to figure this out. I thought for a while there was just one crazy Beaker-obsessed person roaming around the internet, who had decided to stalk my image of Beaker by repeatedly clicking on my site to check on him. Then, I wondered if some teacher had set up a class project about copyright infringement using Muppet images as an example. Then, once I realized I was at the #1 spot it finally occurred to me that given there are millions of people on the internet, and Beaker is pretty famous as muppets go, it’s really not outside the realms of possibility that 30 or more people a day would search for an image of him.

Now, I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s a nice little boost to my statistics (Hey, don’t judge me, I’m still building an audience, and I don’t belong to any traffic-driving networks). On the other hand, I feel like it’s not really a count of people reading what I’m writing. They’re merely looking for an image. They’re in, they’re out. Still, (on my third hand) I guess there’s a chance that 1 or 2 people out of a hundred would then become a loyal reader, I mean maybe if we both identify with Beaker, we already have a connection. Right?

It’s a weird feeling though. It makes me a feel a little Beaker-ish. The Dr. Bunsen Honeydew that is Google has this crazy experiment going and now I’m standing on the sidelines with my hair on fire wondering what the hell happened. I mean, I like writing, and I like people to enjoy what I write. But I don’t like the feeling of being so exposed. I know, I know, I’m a creature of contradictions. C’mere, c’mere, c’mere. Go away. Go away. Go away.

I guess I just feel a little goggled.

Update Sept 15: Up to 231 views on the Muppet post. Who knew that people identified so strongly with Beaker?

Update: Up to 276 views on the Muppet post. Google has now cast me aside and has gone on to fresher Beaker meat. I have to say I’m a little relieved.