Searching for the predictions of Nostradamus

In the midst of a national crisis, Americans search the Web for predictions made by Nostradamus.

September 20 2001.

As reported in the latest issue of our newsletter, the Pandia Post, the horrible American tragedy brought Web news sites to their knees, and the search engines' reported a tremendous boost in traffic. On September 11 our own log program stopped working because of the increase in traffic from people looking for news and online radio transmissions.

Wordspot has now published its latest report on search queries used by Internet searchers in the period September 10th through September 17th, 2001. This report is based on a statistical sampling of words used in searches on the World Wide Web.

Not surprisingly the always popular keywords "s/e/x" and "mp3" have lost their leading positions. "world trade center" is at No. 3, "news" at no. 7 and "osama bin laden" at no. 13.

The upsurge in American patriotism is reflected in the fact that "american flag" reached the twelfth position. So far this all makes sense.

The number 1 position, however, is not taken by "twin towers" or "terrorist attack", as one would expect. No, the most popular search term was -- of all things -- "nostradamus".

How can it possibly be that when the US is experience the worst terrorist attack ever, people want to know more about an obscure mystic from the 16th century?

Nostradamus was a French physician and astrologer living from 1503-1566. One of his books were dedicated to the French king, wishing him a long and happy life. The king died the same year.

There are several Nostradamus prophecies that presumably predict the attack on the World Trade Center and a third world war. A French version of one of the texts (probably not the original) has been rendered as:

Les regions suvjettes a la Balance
Feront trembler les monts par grande guerre
Captif tout sexe deu et toute Bizance
Qu'on criera a l'aube terre a terre

This text has been translated into English as:

The regions subjected to Muslim armies
Shall cause mountains trembling with great war
Prisoners of both sexes and throughout Turkey
One shall cry at dawn from land to land

Note that the word "la Balance" has ended up as "Muslim armies", while the christian Greek empire Byzantium has ended up as muslim Turkey.

The text is like all good prophecies so ambiguous that you can interpret any way you like. And people has done so for centuries. It fits World War I as well as World War II, and -- of course -- the recent Gulf War. During the Second World War the British and the Germans actually competed in producing leaflets on Nostradamus predicting the fall of the German Reich and the Allies respectively.

Snopes.com tells the fascinating story of how another Nostradamus prophecy from 1654 (yes, he was dead at the time) was intentionally falsified in order to fit the terror attack.

Now, what does this tell us about the Web? Well, it could seem it isn't the vehicle for rational and scientific discussions the creators originally intended. It has become a conduit for all cultural phenomena, rational as well as irrational. That is to be expected.

A true post-modernist philosopher would probably argue that the search queries tells us that the Western world, in spite of claims to the contrary, harbors a hidden longing for an overall plan, a hidden meaning behind the seemingly random violence and suffering. It's the uncertainty we cannot stomach.

And if science and religion cannot provide what we are looking for, we turn to occultism of the National Enquirer kind (not true mysticism, mind you). There is probably some truth in this as well.

Still, we do not think that the average American is as irrational as the terrorists that attacked them . There are two important factors to remember.

Firstly: The fact that people want to read about the predictions of Nostradamus does not mean that they believe in these prophesies, not really. No more than we truly believe in the newspaper horoscope. The dividing line between fact and fiction is blurring, and many of us find it mentally rewarding to wander into the What If Land of fantasy and science fiction. The fact that this disaster mirrored a bad Hollywood movie, makes this even more reasonable.

Secondly, these numbers do not tell us that much about the surfing pattern of the average Western Web user. We would guess that most of the people who were looking for news on the day of the disaster turned to their regular news site or Web portal, and clicked their way from there. Most of us do not have to search for cnn.com or altavista.com; we have them bookmarked already -- or we just enter "usatoday.com" in the address window.

Some statistics have show that search engines generate as little 7 percent of traffic to web sites. The number is probably too low, but it is true that most people visit sites directly,using bookmarks, portal links or by typing in the URL. That doesn't mean search engines are unimportant. The first time they visited the site, it was probably after they had found it by using a search engine.

The fact that most Web surfers had to search for Nostradamus -- meaning that they did not have a bookmark for the predictions -- gives us reason for hope.

Note to search engine optimizers

Some webmasters may be tempted to make doorway pages dedicated to Nostradamus to lure searchers into their embrace, for instance pages similar to this one.

Don't! First of all, insulting genuine believers in Nostradamus in this way will not bring you a high conversion rate. Moreover, it will dilute the theme of your site in a way that might cost you points in the ranking competition.

So why are we publishing an article like this? Maybe Nostradamus knows.

(Thanks to Nils Henrik Solum for research on Nostradamus.)

Wordspot
Urban Legends Reference Pages on the Nostradamus Twin Towers prophecy
Nostradamus Repository NYC FAQ
Nostradamus Knock Out S/e/x in Cybersearches (Excite)
News tops Îs/e/x in cybersearches (MSNBC)
Pandia Plus list of Nostradamus sites (yes, we do see the irony)

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