For the first word, take our Ruslish-fied family name. You know, the one that appears in the URL between “www” and “com”. For the second word, take a three-letter word that describes every adult’s favorite thought. You know, the one that starts with an “s” and ends with an “x”. Plug the two-word phrase into a Google search box and proceed to view the results…
Somewhere near the top of the first page, you will get a link to my report of our spring Amsterdam trip.
Google certainly works in fairly straightforward ways. There is that three-letter word clearly appearing in the body of the post, and our family name is clearly part of every single page’s URL on my website. But what is really fascinating is that my friend Brian actually got a pageview on his website originating with this specific search query, which led him to alert me to the phenomenon. In Brian’s case, Google picks him up only because he has a link to my blog in his main blog frame; and he only appears on the second page of the results. But that is hardly the point.
The question here is, Who the hell is googling this? And what the hell do they expect to find, Natasha and me en flagrante derelicto? And why the hell do they click on Brian’s link, but not actually on mine (I have not seen a single pageview coming from that specific search)?
Sheesh…
On a different note, ever since I posted about the erstwhile misspelled giraffe, the number of pageviews originated with that particular search have gone through the roof, compared with all others, now accounting for almost 60% of all Google queries that result in the visits to my site (there were ten more in just the last two days). And I am only on the 10th page of the results for that search! Even more surprising is that now only roughly 1 in 19 of these visitors leaves the site immediately upon getting to the linked page. The overwhelming majority spend time perusing other pages and staying for half again as long as the site’s average visitor. Inexplicable, to say the least. But I most certainly welcome all of you who come across my humble soapbox from this particular direction.
Just don’t expect pictures of Natasha and me… you know…
I certainly admire your ability to analyze the stats in your website. I have no idea who visits my page …unless they leave a comment, of course. I guess deep inside I know I haven’t been updating it, so I feel guilty and prefer to think nobody was reading anyway.
Tip of the hat to Brian again, who clued me in on Google Analytics. Fairly simple set up and a wealth of sometimes baffling information for your run-of-the-mill blogger…
What goes around, comes around. Just yesterday, four people clicked on one of your links back to me from THIS POST ALONE !
Quite the mutual admiration society we have going here, eh?
Well, you know, not to downplay the apparent level of admiration :), I often find myself unable to refrain from clicking every single embedded link in the posts that I read. Curiosity always wins! The only alternative would be to stop putting links in, but who’d want that?