Weird Searches

It's really fun to monitor the way people get to your blog, particularly when they search for key words in search engines. Of course nobody will end up on my blog if they search for "politics", "middle east", "occupation", or any other topic that I would normally discuss here. Those are simply too general. Today, however, I noticed many hits on my blog after people searched the words "sniper hit" which led them to a post about my experience when a sniper scare hit the Washington DC region (the 2nd hit on a Google search). I thought to myself, why would people be looking for something about the old sniper story? It must be something else.

I always run into really weird key word searches that have led people to my blog, but this one caught my attention because more than 20 people today came here all looking for the same thing: "sniper hit". One of them, however, searched for "sniper hit Google video" which I then used to search in Google and found a more likely result for their queries. What's even more interesting is that many of them are from Brazil and a few from Vietnam, Spain, Portugal and Germany!

Apparently there is a new game and/or video being posted on Google Video and YouTube called Sniper Hit which is purportedly a "jihadi" video depicting snipers shooting American soldiers in Iraq that has received a lot of attention. A quick search on YouTube showed the first result which seemed to match the news hype, but when you click on it, you get this message: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

Many of the videos, showing sniper attacks against Americans and roadside bombs exploding under American military vehicles, have been posted not by insurgents or their official supporters but apparently by Internet users in the United States and other countries, who have passed along videos found elsewhere.

In a game "Sniper Hit" which is posted on YouTube by a user named 69souljah, a serviceman is knocked down by a shot but then gets up to seek cover.

Why would people want to watch such a thing? Curiosity, I guess, which killed the cat.

Other funny/weird keywords that apparently lead to this blog:

awlad shawari3 (sorry, none here)
"egyptian women" veil gloves
"ellen knickmeyer" genetics (whaaa?)
"one terrorist attack away from a police state" (hmmm)
al sayed hassan youtube
amman call
antiperspirant fasting ramadan (LOL)
britain news anchor wear hijab
bush's reality (or lack thereof?)
cause nine eleven
fady my space (sorry no fady here)
female dress hijab photo talking by phone
google video "sniper hit"
guantanamo extraordinary renditions (yes, we've got that!)
hanan turk pictures after hijab (this common one leads to this post)
hanan turk wearing islamic hijab
hanan turk website
hijab of egyptian actresses
if i break my fast young muslim (umm, then you go to hell...jk)
jordan egregious abuses
living conditions in sharjah
military blog israel
mohammed al-durrah video
mona news presenter lbc
muslim prayer chair (haha, you wish)
occupied territory syria
pictures of hanan turk in her new tv series
pictures of the mabahith
pictures showing how to wash for wudu (instead they got this)
sharing with people who speak your own langguage or different languages
torture slogans (you mean ANTI-torture slogans?)

[technorati tags: sniper hit, blogging, YouTube]