Searching For- Alyce Anderson In-all Categories... -

I hope you found her.

“Alyce” (with a ‘y’ and a ‘c’) is not the most common spelling. The standard “Alice” would have been auto-corrected. But the user typed Alyce . This suggests certainty. They know exactly who they are looking for.

That query sitting in a server log represents a very human truth: Searching for- alyce anderson in-All Categories...

Maybe you are reading this right now because you too have a name stuck in your head. A “Alyce Anderson” of your own. To the person who typed “Searching for- alyce anderson in-All Categories...” at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday:

The Digital Ghost Hunt: What “Searching for Alyce Anderson in All Categories” Really Means I hope you found her

There is a peculiar kind of poetry in a search bar. It usually starts with a name, a date, or a product code. But every once in a while, a string of text comes across a server log that stops you cold.

This is the saddest part. When you select “All Categories,” you have given up on narrowing things down. You don’t know if Alyce Anderson is a person (Facebook), a product (eBay), an author (Amazon), an obituary (Legacy.com), or a character (Wikipedia). But the user typed Alyce

One such query is: