For my very observant readers, you’ll see that once again wigeons and french vanilla ice cream have both made it into Google Hot Trends. I say observant not because I assume you can read the words above, but because you might recall that I once wrote about this exact same topic.

I thought that these two things would make for an interesting flavor combination. Duck and french vanilla. Odd for some, but a delicacy for others, so apparently, there’s some more traction for this strange combination. Probably Ben and Jerry’s…maybe a special flavor for Dick Cheney (think about that one…it’s funny…you’ll laugh later).

It was a mystery then why these two appeared, and it still is. There’s not a single answer online about it. In fact, my post from February is what comes up first if you search for “wigeon french vanilla.” So, I’m the definitive answer on what possibly could be causing this and I haven’t a clue.

Wigeons…they are cute, but why are they back?

Could this be anotehr attack on Google Trends? It’s been taking a hit lately in a number of articles, as apparently someone has decided to have a little fun with the folks in Mountain View. Tech Crunch has covered a number of these Google Trends attacks (or bombings). Some are more creative than others. Including the upside down curse out and a certain infamous symbol (which I still don’t know how someone did). The trick is to get a bunch of people or servers to simply search over and over for the same term until Google Trends picks it up. No one knows for sure what volume of search it takes, but I bet the people behind these bombs have a good idea.

Even terms that seem like a hoax or bombing can turn out to be real, as the same folks at Tech Crunch figured out when they posted this article about the latest goofs and spam attacks. Of course, each of the terms they called out as being either a goof (sh*t pond) or spam (missingmoney.com) were real. Sh*t pond was on Howard Stern and, as I’ve pointed out before, things that happen on Howard always appear on Google Trends. Missingmoney.com I also wrote about, as it was on Dateline MSNBC. I called it a rip off of a Today Show story from 3 month ago (because it was).

So, it’s hard to tell what’s real and fake, but its a good world after all when there’s enough wigeons and french vanilla ice cream for everyone.

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Posted on July 21st, 2008 by Jonathan - Everyone But You
Filed under: A Little Bit of Everything, Mystery, animals

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