Going postal, 21st Century style

The hit counter you see at the bottom of the links column on the right side of this page is linked to a service called Site Meter that tracks details about each access to this blog. Don’t worry, it doesn’t give me any personal identifiers, just things the like domain name of the viewer’s server, the user’s operating system and Web browser, date and time of access and the time zone of the user.

Among the information is, when available, the URL of the page that referred the user to this site, such as a link from a search engine or someone else’s blog. Lately, I’ve noticed that a handful of people have stumbled upon my humble blog via searches on phrases such as “misys healthcare hate,” and “epic systems hate.” They came from different Internet domains in different time zones.

For the record, I have mentioned Misys Healthcare Systems and Epic Systems Corp. at various times since I started blogging last May. It’s very possible I have typed the word “hate” in a previous posting. But I am absolutely positive I have not associated any sort of hatred—mine or anybody else’s—with any company I have written about.

I’m wondering what would possess someone to search on such phrases. Perhaps they are looking to see what sort of negative things people have said about vendors they are considering. Or perhaps they are disgruntled former employees. Let’s hope this is not the 21st Century update on going postal.