Over the past week while watching for defacers (the upgrade seems to have helped … for now) I’ve been keeping a file of some interesting hits and curious visitors to this blog. Some things I logged because they were just plain funny (btw, 70.170.78.221, did you ever find that “skin+texture+penis” you spent a couple days hunting for?). So anyway, I happen to be looking through the log just now and caught this from Host: 66.150.244.152: googlealert.com Link.

Shades of a couple earlier posts (Link 1 and Link 2), eh? It’s not like a search for their company name on this blog points to only that one post. A simple search gets plenty of entries. And I’ve never seen Google Alert as a referral before now, and as I’ve mentioned previously, I monitor quite closely. So what gives? Busy “monitoring your professional interests online”? Gotta “Safeguard Your Reputation”? Look, why not just put my blog on your favorites and use comments?

The sad part is that I once sent them a confidential email with information that might have been of use to them. Next time I will undoubtedly think twice.

For all those who are nervous about Google’s tentacles, I may not be nervous, but I do understand.