Of course, science and business are often inextricably linked now, and really, everything in life (at least in capitalist societies) comes down to money ultimately. And business-related datamining is indeed rife: what better way to tap into consumer demands than see what’s being searched for on the net?

Despite my aversion to such modes of spying – the term ‘business intelligence,’ to me, makes the implicit spying connotations of ‘market research’ rather more explicit – I will admit that my website is hosted by, and created using software produced by the greatest corporate giant of all: Microsoft. But then avoiding Miscrosoft’s a little difficult, and shunning their free for two years, easy-to-use service when my web design skills are as poor as my finances wouldn’t really be making much of a statement. There’s no question that they hold a global technology monopoly, and there’s little question that they are involved in the whole keeping tabs game through the programs they create and produce. And I will also admit that I like to see by what route people have arrived at my site. Their service allows me to do this. Supposedly so I can see which advertising channels and what content is ‘most effective’ in the marketplace. Many come via this blog or my bulletins, and some come via links in the press releases I throw out from time to time. This is good, it means my skills as a one-man writing machine and self-promoting PR entity aren’t entirely crap.

A number also come via Google searches. The top three searches are perhaps not surprising, being christopher nosnibor, geeek magazine and "christopher nosnibor." It’s nice to know that people actually care enough or are interested enough to Google me (despite the fact I strongly dislike that term, which reflects yet another global monopoly. I like Alta Vista mysef, but no-one ever Alta Vistad me to date) and the publications I have been published in.

I’ve also had a handful of hits by searches for chris nosnibor. Ok. Informal, but y’know, I’m down with that. And there’s a logic to it.

That someone’s already searched for clinicality press is also something that has a logic to it. Again, I guess putting word out can generate interest.

Then there are the one-off hits that really make me think. One browser arrived at christophernosnibor.co.uk by typing "so dark all over europe" which isn’t a phrase you hear every day. But it has meaning to me, as it’s the title of an epic post-everything novel I’m working on. It’s mentioned on the site. I lifted the title from the song ‘Black Planet’ by The Sisters of Mercy. It’s appropriate on a number of levels to the book, and I’m a huge Sisters fan, so why not? So I’m guessing a fellow Sisters of Mercy fan stumbled upon my page, and I like that.

Other phrases are a little less obvious: short story using dual narrative being one example. Well, yeah, I’ve done a couple of those. I wasn’t aware that people would trawl the world wide web in search of such things. Is there a market for them? It is an obscure genre I wasn’t aware of? No matter, it’s a curiously specific search, and I’m glad to have been able to provide what this person was looking for. I hope they’re lovin’ my work. Another quite specific search was "cut-up prose" plagiarist. Yup, that’s me, that’s what I do. You’re welcome. brainwashing repetition – yep, that’s one of mine.

That someone arrived at my site by searching for crash us a fag amused me. It’s a phrase I’ve heard in the street, which is why I’ve incorporated it as a piece of dialogue, on more than one occasion. That trying this search for myself yielded 124,000 hits on Google surprised me. But not nearly as much as the fact that ‘Scum,’ which contains this line, is the third listed page of those 124,000.

I assume that my satirical details regarding the sartorial choices of various characters means that people doing a spot of clothes shopping may trip over my site (instead of their own shoelaces or tongues) by accident. Which brings me to aramani jkts. How. The. Hell? But not as perplexing as the multiple seekers of brogues. I’ve had brogues, brown brogues and even brogues with grey pinstripe. It’s not a good look and you won’t find it on my site.

So what can we learn from this? Well, first of all, that people are obsessed with tossy clothing, the kind of garments I like to rip the piss out of. And that by making more references to clothing and fashion, I can increase my hits (yeah!) but that many of those who arrive at my site will be disappointed, as will I, because they’re likely to be the kind of tossers I’m mocking in the story they’ve just stumbled upon (boo!). But we can also learn a little more about datamining. ‘They’ – the dataminers, the faceless corporate intelligence workers who congregate and discuss datamining techniques on places like http://www.data-miners.com/blog/ – are onto us. All of us. But we can try misleading them.

A while ago, in a comment on another blog, I suggested that knitting patterns could be a revolutionary countercapitalist tool. The corporations pay well for datamined information and plan their next moves based on that information. For a while now, I’ve been searching, via different engines, using different permutations and, where possible, different computers, for knitting patterns. Not all the time, just randomly, occasionally. Now, what would be really cool would be if some of you reading this blog did the same. Will anything come of it? Perhaps not. But maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some large company launching a range of knitting patterns, or an ad campaign in which some hip kids are drinking Coke or wearing Nike and chatting about knitting patterns as the companies throw their corporate weight and finances behind capturing the zeitgeist. Unlikely? Yes, but not impossible. Let’s see....