That is, I used to believe it was random...
Being bored this fine late, late night (when I should be in bed righting my sleep schedule to something approximating "normal") I kept clicking it, blog after blog and I think there is a pattern. I think it flings you not entirely without rhyme or reason to a blog it thinks may have some similarity to yours. Or maybe not.
I kept clicking and noticed it seems to follow a continually updating topic affinity. That is, it goes something like this:
Blog #1. A subject matter from your blog. Blog # 2. A subject matter from THAT blog. Blog # 3. A subject matter from THAT one....and so on and so on.
My first journey through this thread of blogishness took me to a blog written by someone else in Florida. That's the only connection I could find since the rest of the blog was all about the babies...oh the lovely babies!
You know the type...post after post, loaded with hundreds of adorable (and incredibly repetitive) pictures of the kids, or worse yet, the ONE kid! Every freakin' moment of their lives photographed and published for all the world to witness the glorious miracle that is the God-kissed, most beautiful and precious offspring of (no doubt) a couple of world-class precocious a-holes! News Flash: Your kids aren't that special! Get over it! It's called breeding and you straight people do it every freakin' day...sheesh!
And every click of Next Blog from here on out was just more of the same, ad nauseum.
So back to my blog to start anew. Now, on journey number 2, it seemed to veer me towards artist blogs. At first guitarists then visual artists then performance artists, then anime devotees, then Malaysian teenagers. My head was spinning. How'd we end up going that route? Eh, it was interesting. At least it wasn't the rugrat shrine pilgrimage.
I went back to my blog for one last roll of the roulette wheel. Unfortunately it immediately came up 00 and no matter how many clicks, I couldn't get away from it. Yup. The "LORD Is My Shepherd" blogs! Jesus this and Jesus that.
Why did it even get started down this path? Location, I suspect. It may be the strongest indicator of what you get as your first pick. Maybe because some statistician somewhere assumes that people like to read about other people who live near them. A melding of the old sense of "community" with the new medium of the Internet, easing the nubie into the global blogging community. Google may suspect (or likely have actual statistical data) that the Next Blog feature is used mainly by people new to blogging.
So when Google analyses my attempt to read a "random" blog out of sheer boredom, it interprets me as so:
"Beep Bop Boop...Buzz Buzz" (That's the noise the algorithm makes in my imagination) "User 7458789578378552882" (That's my Google assigned identification number (which will eventually replace my name in the not-so-distant Google-controlled future), again in my imagination) "IP address indicates the USA, State of Florida. Accessing Florida in database... Result: Interests include Picking teeth (or, frequently, just "tooth") with straw, Country-music, Jesus lovin', Baby makin'. Lots of Baby makin'. Beep Bop Boop."
Time to cash in my chips and move to another table.