I was investigating what looked like an Apache bug (I’ll have to blog
separately about that one, quite an interesting story) when I noticed in my logs
a hit on my private Web site.  As the "private" part indicates, I don’t
expect to get many hits on that site except from friends, but this IP was
definitely not familiar to me.  A quick "dig -x" revealed that the IP was a
googlebot.  Somehow, google must have found a link to my private Web site
and I am now being harvested.

Okay, fine, it’s not like there is anything secret there anyway.

My curiosity was piqued, though:  how did Google find out
about the site and this particular URL, which is a report on my heliskiing trip
in Whistler.  Out of curiosity, I ran a

google search on "Whistler heliski".

Yup, that’s me in first place.  Before even the main heliskiing web site. 
How is that possible?

So I went to my

own heliski page and looked for

backward links.  As you can see, it’s pretty bare there.  Just my private
web site, again, and…  my weblog.  I had totally forgotten about that.  So
mystery #1 is explained:  Google harvested my weblog and got the URL from
there.

Something is still mysterious, though:  how can these
simple four links explain that I am mentioned even before the main heliskiing
site?

Could it have something to do with the fact that… 

I own my first name in Google?  (roar)

Yup, even the Entertainer is behind me.

This amusing incident makes me really wonder about Google’s
algorithms.  Not mentioning the fact that I thought Google did not show
weblogs in its results. 

Another interesting thing is that Google has already registered
my new weblog location (which is barely two weeks old), and that they are now
respectively #1 and #2.

Fascinating.