Why Do People Keep Googling My Virtual Reality Blog in Search for an 18th Century Painting?

New World Notes has been around so long, about 20% of my daily traffic comes from Google searches -- most of which make sense, but some leave me totally perplexed. For instance, here's four posts that always show up in my traffic feed every day:

• /female-second-life-avatars-bare-more-skin.html
• /nwn/2013/07/skyrim-slavery-mods.html
• /nwn/2014/10/boudicca-amat-pinky.html
• /nwn/2014/10/gamerghazi-gamergate.html

Even from just reading the HTML code you can guess what people are searching for in the first two and the fourth one. (The second, on Skyrim's disturbing slavery mods, is a classic by Janine Hawkins.)

The third one, however, I don't know WTF. It's Janine's post about an SLer who modeled her avatar after "Pinky", Thomas Lawrence's classic painting from 1794. Thing is, I don't even know what search terms are bringing people to it, because using any keyword related to that painting doesn't display my blog. And it's brought something like ten thousand people to New World Notes from I don't know where, for I don't know why.

If anyone can figure out what search engine optimization is leading people to this fairly strange, not necessarily optimized result, I'd love to know. Meanwhile, "Pinky" fans -- welcome! You were searching for a 225 year old painting and instead you found a virtual world recreation as featured on a virtual reality blog.

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Comments

[Troy McConaghy]

I was curious if that image is anywhere else on the net, so I searched for it with TinEye, and it found another copy at http://whotalking.com/flickr/aaron%20copland

Now I'm more confused than ever.

[Shirtbloke]

Maybe it's this Google Image search.....
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pinky+painting&safe=off&hl=en-GB&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmpJyDq9zKAhUGOhQKHUGvC3QQ_AUICCgC&biw=1060&bih=760

It's not the first result but it stands out on the page.

[Iggy]

Boudicca? Easy to explain! There are still many Celts mad at those pesky Romans. Boudicca almost ran them out.

[pixeleen mistral]

Iggy is right - most of us keep coming back
for Boudicca -- sooner or later the Celts are
going to prevail.

[Anonymous from 8chan]

Hi. Rather than “why do people search for a classical painting on my website”, you should ask “why does Google display my website when people search for that painting”. I searched for any images of the Delphic Oracle and one your blog posts presents a Second Life re-creation of relevant painting. Maybe Google decided to display your blog to me on the basis of my other search patterns.

[hassan]

Google is constantly changing algorithms, sometimes the results do not have any meaning .. it stays machines