Real Search Engine Hits
Just what crazy things are people typing into search engines these days?

The National Public Toilet Map
Only the Aussies would go to the trouble of creating a web site dedicated to documenting the location of public toilets right across the nation eh?

Korean Myths About Cats And Dogs
Here's a load of esoterica you probably didn't need to know.

Beyond A Joke?
I recall "the good old days"(tm) when it cost $10 per megabyte to use the Net, speeds were limited to 9600 or 14.4Kbps, and Netscape 2.0 was the greatest browser in the world.

Those were the days when you could almost count the number of local websites on the fingers of one hand and Yahoo was just a bunch of links.

To find anything really worthwhile you could use one of the very few search engines -- but would just as likely fire up a command-line tool like gopher or archie.

Readers Say (updated hourly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

Very, very occasionally you'd run into a website that carried an advertising banner -- and of course you'd click on that banner to find out more about any company sufficiently forward-thinking to consider the Net as a worthwhile place to advertise.

Those days are now long-gone.

So has the arrival of 56K dial-up, billions of pages of information and a much simpler point-and-click interface improved the Internet experience?

Well yes and no.

The rich motherlode of content on the web has grown immensely and you can lose yourself for hours in a surfing expedition -- but then there are those damned ads! Based on my own attitude, and a lot of feedback from readers, I'd have to say that the profile of your average online advertiser has changed from "forward thinker" to "mindless moron."

When I dropped in to Salon.com the other day I was forced to put up with virtually every type of online advertising ever invented.

Firstly I got an interstitial (click-through) ad which I clicked through -- so the advertiser got a really poor deal for his money there.

Then, as the page I wanted to see was loading, a pop-up ad started to load -- so I closed that window before -- once again, cheating the advertiser out of their chance to sell me something.

Finally, once the page I wanted had loaded -- there was a honking great display ad in the middle of it. Unfortunately for the advertiser, I couldn't see it because I had my graphics turned off.

So, did these ultra-intrusive attempts to expose me to some vendor's products or services work?

Hell no!

The advertiser probably paid good money to try and catch my eye -- but due to the flood of stuff that sites such as Salon throw at me, I make a point of ignoring the lot.

Of course I could always pay Salon's subscription fees and avoid all this ad-clutter. However, I'm only a very casual Salon visitor and can't therefore justify spending a fairly significant amount of dosh just to dodge the ads.

No, my strategy, and one which I gather has been adopted by a lot of others who used to visit such sites regularly, is simply to strike such annoying locations from our bookmarks list.

So -- this totally excessive level of advertising and intrusion has produced a lose-lose-lose situation. I don't visit, they don't get the traffic, and even when people drop-by the advertiser probably pays for impressions that are never seen.

You might think that sites and advertisers will eventually catch on to the fact that their efforts are self-defeating -- but I suspect they won't. I see a Yahoo spokesman claiming that they expect to increase the level of intrusiveness even further in order to help offset the falling ad revenues.

Suffice to say that Yahoo Australia/NZ has this week announced the axing of 11 percent of its workforce. Kind of reminds me of that scene from The Simpsons where Homer repeatedly burns his hand by reaching for hot food -- "Hmmm, owch! Hmmm owch! Hmmm Owch!" Some people just don't learn.

Save The Aardvark Fund
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If guilt is gnawing away inside you then there's still time to donate.

Just drop by and hand over your loot.

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