One of the great mysteries of creation is why The Flying Cloud shows up as number one in a Google search for ‘island maidens’. I can’t recall who pointed it out, but this phenomenon began around April of 2009 — long before Sarah or Helga made their first appearances — and has continued with few interruptions until the present day. It’s not as if the story had many island maidens back then. Indeed, their only mention was a few episode titles. And you’d think there’d surely be dozens of sites competing for this one particular phrase. But it seems that the Royal Navy Airship Service has edged them out.
I cannot help but wonder what other simple 2-word or 3-word phrases turn up The Flying Cloud at or near the top of a Google search. If you come across any winners — or better yet, something totally off-the-wall — let me know!
You’re also #1 on “sultry airships!”
I haven’t found any other tags that follow the wormhole to the top of Google, but I was dismayed to learn that typing in “Flying Cloud” does NOT find the site in three pages! It wasn’t until I added “airship” to the text string that I hit the jackpot.
With “sultry airships” and “island maidens” scoring so high, Google must imagine you have a porn site or something. What next, “Flying Cloud” Rule 34 fan art?
Sultry Airships? Ye gods! That one’s going to be hard to beat! I’m tempted to turn this into an ongoing challenge — rather like the Precocious Animated Ducks Award — for the Sultry Airships Trophy
“pearl smugglers” get you in second place
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMB_enCA304CA304&q=pearl+smugglers&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
“routine flight ops” get you in second-and-a-half place, also!
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMB_enCA304CA304&q=routine+flight+ops&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
‘Pearl smugglers’? I never thought of that! And it comes up in first place on Google US if I enclose it in quotes. A great discovery!
I bet if you tried “island virgins” the results would be quite different… whaddaya mean you already tried that? Shocked! I’m truly shocked!
Ahem, my point is, the term “maiden” is archaic, and therefore rare. See also “sultry” and for that matter “airship”…
Is it really that archaic? I just checked, and ‘Maiden’ gets 35 million hits on Google while ‘Virgin’ gets 157 million. That’s less that a factor of five difference, and much of this is because of ‘Virgin Airways’, the ‘Virgin Islands’, and Western naming traditions for churches and schools.
‘Sultry’ and ‘Airships’ are both way down there. I’d be tempted to try ’sultry virgins’ or ‘virgin airships’, but my last experiment with wildly inappropriate word combinations produced such unnerving results that I remember them with a mixture of amazement and fear
OK, I admit it. My claim that “maiden” is archaic was based on… well, not much, I guess. I’m trying to improve my skills in the area of sounding like I know what I’m talking about while really just making stuff up — since that skill has proven so amply remunerative for Rush Limbaugh and others of that ilk… notice how I deftly turned the conversation from island maidens to bloated gasbags, er, I mean airships… perhaps I should leave this thread now…
Anyway there’s nowhere online I’d rather go to find island maidens, so props to Google for getting it right