statistics

More Search Terms

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I am endlessly fascinated by some of the things that people google which result in them landing on my blog. So here are some of the highlights. These are broken down into a few categories of amusement, 1) what the heck was that person searching for, 2) how did that search land on my blog, 3) I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!

What the heck was that person searching for?

  • ‘tactical mayonnaise’ – Lunch tactics? Or war tactics?
  • ‘resplendent start with the dead’ – I don’t know what that means, but I’ve had that one no less than 4 times!
  • ‘pull out fingernails’ – Yeesh. No thank you!
  • ‘human zombie cat’ – Yeesh! NO THANK YOU! Stitch together your sick creations on someone else’s blog thank-you-very-much. I have enough trouble with a living, non-human-hybrid cat.
  • ‘jelly fish hunting fighting boats’ – What could that even mean? It conjures images of sea battles with giant mutant jelly fish.

How did that search land on my blog?

These are usually things that I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about, but I do in fact agree with or support. So it’s like Google detected that these people think like me and led them to my blog, despite me never mentioning anything of the sort.

  • ‘are “two question” marks aggressive’ – I don’t know how they found me, but for any future searches on this topic: Yes. Yes they are.
  • ‘awesome cat’ – Okay, I had a couple of hits on this one, but I’m not sure how those found me. I have the opposite. But I did get a hit on ‘nusiance cats’, so that one I understand.
  • ‘what do zombie pirates say?’ – I really don’t know. But I kind of feel like, if anybody should know, I should know, right?
  • ‘where there be pirates’ – Was this a search by an actual pirate?!
  • ‘i grit my teeth when i pet my cat’ – My favorite, hands down. It describes my position exactly. I don’t think I ever said that on my blog though, so how did they end up here?

I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!

  • ‘big headed chiquita bananas’ – Lead to this post, in which I mention the chiquita banana lady, but not the size of her head.
  • ‘bacon evie’ – Now those are good search terms for finding me! I get a lot of ‘erith1 is this thing on?’ searches, but those are more obvious. What if ‘bacon evie’ was looking for someone else?
  • ‘litter box in bathroom curtain AND cat peed on curtains why’ – I soo feel for the desperation of the person searching for this. Now, my cat didn’t pee on my curtains, but my story did involve both cat pee and a curtain. So I wasn’t too far off.
  • ‘picklerita’ – Wow, I actually had a good post for them! There can’t be that many picklerita posts out there.
  • ‘she toot on me’ – ::sigh:: but I did get a ‘toot hole’ search, so maybe the phrase is catching on!

The Fracus

/ Shane / 3 Comments

On Friday I wrote a post about the Olympics and Chicago. It went live at 10:49 a.m., as soon as I heard the announcement. I had actually written the post the night before, and I was so sure Chicago was going to be awarded, that I wrote the whole thing as, “Yay, we did it!” So I had to totally re-do the post that morning.

At 11:54 I was notified that my post was promoted to the top story on wordpress.com, where it stayed for the rest of the day as the only Olympic related post. I was pretty excited about this. Too bad I had just completed my important moments in blogging timeline post! As expected, the post proceeded to blow up, dwarfing all of my previous high traffic numbers. I had over 1,500 hits on my blog that day (my previous high was like 150) and around 22 comments on the post, many of them from Brazil (and some not in English!) It remained on the front page Saturday and Sunday, netting me another 28 comments and 1,400 hits and 20 comments and 1,300 hits respectively. So, in three days, my blog had over 4,303 people visit, and that post received 70 comments.

I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t stop compulsively checking it all weekend. I would go away for a few minutes and when I came back, there would be more comments. I was trying to approve the comments as fast as possible to keep the discussion going. It’s kind of funny because I didn’t really put any more time and effort into that post than any of my other posts. So it is kind of interesting to read all of the comments and really analyze that post in detail. I’m guessing my post was picked because it is somewhat informative, with a hometown view, without being critical or nasty. I wonder how much thought they put into picking posts for the front page. It’s probably totally random. 🙂

Anyway, in order to capitalize on the traffic, I put posts up for Saturday and Sunday as well. Many people who stopped did go and check out the next post back, to see if there was anything interesting. What post was it? The Toot Hole. <sarcasm>Lovely. I couldn’t have picked a better one if I tried, that’s exactly the post I would want the world to read. </sarcasm>

As of today the post is still on the front page, though it’s not the top post anymore, moving down 7 spots. I don’t know how often they change it, but it seems like it might be up there for a couple of more days. As much fun as it was to constantly see the stats going up, I don’t exactly feel like personally accomplished. After all, it was more of a “right place at the right time” kind of thing than a “my blog is awesome and deserved it” kind of thing. Still, I guess you make your own luck to some degree, and if you put enough stuff out there, something’s bound to catch on.

So, if you were wondering what was going on here over the weekend, now you know. And knowing is half the battle. The other half is getting your lazy keister off the couch. If only G.I. Joe would have had 10 more seconds each week to explain the second half of the battle, they could have changed the outlook of an entire generation.

Data Mining

/ Shane / 1 Comment

One of, if not THE main reason I moved to wordpress from livejournal was that livejournal didn’t offer the ability to see statistics. And the best part about those statistics are seeing what searches on google are leading to hits on my blog.

These statistics are not at all what you would expect, but they are fascinating. For example, the most frequent search item that people use to find this blog is ‘clock’. Searches that involve that word have landed on this blog more than 1,070 times. I just can’t fathom that! I’m sure there are entire blogs devoted just to clocks. As far as I know, I have only really mentioned clocks two times, and in passing at that. How far down the list must my blog be that people are finding me?

After clocks, my next two most searched for items are running neck and neck at just over 200 hits each. Kate Micucci is narrowly beating out searches related to the Mario ? box. The first I feel okay about since I actually took time and energy to write up an informative post. The second I feel a little bad about, since my post is really just a summary and link-through to another post. Still, at least in those cases I’m fairly sure that the searchers got what they were looking for, as opposed to all those clock people.

Sometimes when I look at the search results, I know exactly which post of mine the person found. For example, when someone for some reason searches for ‘smell my gas’, well, I know I happen to have a post with that name. Same goes for ‘phantom pig‘, though I’m not sure why anybody is searching for either of those things. Or when I see one for ‘job hunting secretly’, I chuckle to myself thinking, “Oh ho buddy, have I got a post for you.” I’m always glad when I feel like I have satisfied a request. Another example, I know the person who searched for ‘awesomest man ever’ definitely found what they were looking for.

Sometimes I know which post they found, but I’m not really sure if I have satisfied their request. For example, requests like ‘larp babes’ or ‘hot larpers’ obviously led them to this post, but it doesn’t look like they found what they were looking for. Or ‘what do hipsters eat’ obviously led them here, but were they wanting to learn how to be a hipster or were they just generally curious? Like, “What the heck DO they eat?”

Some posts I really, really hope they DIDN’T find what they were looking for, or else I would get a little self conscious, like the person who found me by searching for ‘fat man at baseball game’. I don’t *think* I’ve been to any baseball games lately, but hey they found my blog didn’t they? The same goes for 15 or so hits I’ve received on ‘odd looking people’. I mean, I’m not so attractive, but I hope nobody would describe me as “odd”. But here they are on my blog! (j/k by the way, I know those hits go here)

Some search terms are very specific to where I have no idea what they were searching for at all, much less how in the world they ended up on my blog. Take, for example, the search for ‘picture of 6 rings march 14,2009’. 

Then there are the very odd searches, like ‘zombie solution stuck in a building‘ or ‘how to explain a picture to a dead rabbi’. Aside from having no clue which post on my blog could have possibly fulfilled the search criteria, do you think someone communes with the spirit of a rabbi who died before the invention of the camera? And this person thought maybe he’d find someone in a similar situation on the Internet whose advice he might ask?

I think one of my favorite search items was ‘pickle pops and cancer’. I am SO vindicated on that one! Unfortunately, I haven’t had any hits on ‘nun skin‘ yet.