My friend and Social Media guru, Ken Mueller, posted a light and humorous look at the “behind the scenes” reality of his blog’s traffic yesterday. As bloggers look at the statistics of our blogs, we can see the search terms (from Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) that people used to find our little sliver of the internet pie. Most search terms are fairly obvious, but sometimes, folks find a blog while looking for some strange things.
Now, my blog is certainly not as popular as the Inkling Media blog, but I thought it might be interesting to share some of the traffic stats for my blog, as well.
The Obvious
I’ve posted before that my most popular posts tend to be reviews and summaries of stories by Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Parker, Raymond Carver, James Thurber, and Pinckney Benedict. That makes SOME sense. I mean, Flannery and Dorothy are slightly more well-known than Eric Wyatt or Words Matter. I am amazed, though, the sheer volume of people, on a daily basis, looking for information on some of these short stories. I hope it’s a good sign; I hope it means people are reading and studying these classic stories.
The Quirky:
One of the more popular searches that had me scratching my head was this one: Sort Story.
That’s right. S-O-R-T Story. First, I was taken aback by how many people were misspelling “short story,” but as it happened more often, I came to a different realization. There was SOME reason that a misspelling of “short story” kept landing on my web site. That’s right. The reason I was getting misspelled traffic was simple: I misspelled “short story” in one of my blog post tags. A happy accident, I should say. I have a special place in my heart for others who struggle with spelling, so I decided to leave it and folks who forget an “h” will still find some information on short fiction.
Some other search terms are less-easy to explain. They can be funny, even. Here are a few of my favorites:
weird blog – I could understand, “weird blogger,” but the blog itself isn’t too odd…is it?
sliver of glass in hand – I wish I knew which page this search found, but I can’t recreate it…
bill mignogna – I didn’t know Bill Mignogna (apparently, he passed away in 2009?), and I’m sure I never posted about him, but somehow a search engine decided to divert people looking for information about him to my blog?
a girl amidst traffic – I think this would make a great story title, or band name. Or, even, a writing prompt.
dear boss, i hate you – No comment. (I’m self-employed.)
weird words that can explain someone – Blogger, Writer, Wyatt. Seems about right.
“stroker between her” – Oddly enough, this has something to do with a car engine and restoration…
wifesexvacation – I think it is the way the words “wifes ex vacation” are all run together that makes this one unsettling.
complete unblocker – I have a feeling they weren’t actually looking for my Unblocker series of writing prompts…
Odd, But Good?
Finally, there were a few that I consider to be odd but good. These are slightly weird ways to find my blog, but I hope whoever did the search was happy with where they landed:
magic guillotine story – I did, in fact, give a short review of a “magic guillotine story”.
what goes up must converge – They didn’t have the title right, but they found a summary of one amazing story.
female chimney sweeper – They may not have found what they were looking for, either, but they found my thoughts on a classic Raymond Carver story.
barclay’s wine complaints – Yes. I had one, too and I tried to learn a thing or two about my own customer service from the experience. Hopefully the company will learn from their mistakes and improve their questionable customer service.
im sorry but – This search leads to an Unblocker writing prompt. Maybe whoever searched with these words was inspired to write through their apology?
waffle writing prompts – The Waffle House writing prompt was actually a pretty popular post, so maybe word was getting around?
Regardless of how or why people stop by, I hope they found something of what they were looking for.
Except maybe the guy looking for his wife’s ex on vacation…somewhere in the woods or on a lonely beach, where he could go missing and no one would notice for days and days…
Have a great weekend. Happy Writing!