We love keyword research, not only because it gives our clients a real competitive edge but also for its lighter side. Over the course of our meticulous keyword research, we see an amazing quantity of bizarre long-tail requests, which often raise a smile in an otherwise academic exercise. To provide some light relief from our monthly marketing suggestions, I have teamed up with our expert PPC’er, Vicky Scott, to share with you some of the more funny, unlikely and just plain weird examples our keyword research tools come up with. It’s a uniquely voyeuristic situation to be in, to see exactly the type of things people are looking for on search engines, and it raises its fair share of eyebrows…

One of the more common things we see when keyword researching is a series of queries (presumably) from the same person, who believe that by subtly changing the order of their keywords they will get some kind of instant answer to their bizarre query from the Google Gods:

can my dog sit with me on the plane
can i take my dog with me on the plane
can i board with my dog on the plane
is it possible to sit my dog with me on plane

The strange thing about this is that all the queries bring up the same answer (“yes with certain airlines” for the curious), which means that the person must REALLY have not wanted their dog to come with them.

This is perhaps the same person who wanted to treat their dog by searching for:

adventure travel for dogs

One of my favourites for the ‘wow’ factor is

i cant see writing on my computer properly

This creates the wonderful mental image of the searcher squinting at the screen, trying to follow instructions on how to fix the writing on their PC. True, they’re probably using another PC to ask the question, but I prefer the concept this way around…

In a similar note – where a perfectly sensible search query can get corrupted by our keyword-addled brains – is this simple search for:

hippo insurance

Turns out it’s a brand, but it did briefly prompt a flurry of debate in the office over whether the searcher was looking for protection FOR their pet hippo, or protection FROM other hippos.

Sometimes, you find people who treat the search engine as their own personal agony aunt:

i think i married an egyptian man on holiday

I can’t help but wonder exactly what the woman in question wanted the search engine to tell her here… or perhaps she was just looking for some belated congratulations and a wedding gift.

Then we have the type of person we affectionately know as the ‘pub quizzer’ – the type who treat search engines in the way that Ask Jeeves used to be used:

who parked her van near alaskan fruit orchards during her early singing days, just so shed have something to munch

A simple repeating of the question to Google suggests that this team never did get the answer they needed to win the quiz – though rephrasing the question seems to suggest it was Jewell, in case you were wondering…

Sometimes the search is fine and it’s just down to an overactive imagination on our part:

Snorkelling safari south Africa

…which conjures up another wonderful image of zebras, lions and elephants all wearing the latest underwater gear. Presumably the giraffes would be just tall enough not to need it, though.

In stark contrast to this is my personal favourite – the king of the long tail, the man (I’m assuming…) who knew EXACTLY what he was looking for:

Flexible lesbians in the gym working out naked

Search marketer’s dream that one – provided your site caters for the flexible lesbian demographic. I’ll leave it to your own imagination to guess how I found that one, but I assure you it was entirely innocent!