Thursday, April 5, 2007

Spying on myself

Okay, okay, I broke down and signed up for google analytics.

I've been puzzled by how people find me on searches (and not many do) because I figure I'm just so far down, how would you ever get to me?

A couple of the searches make sense. Two people googled the name of this blog, so of course I'm going to come up right on top. (If you're interested, the next hit is the Wikipedia entry on words in English that "may have no rhymes." The hit after that is a glossary of pirate terms suggesting "ravelin" as a rhyme for javelin.) So that's google as the blogland phone book.

Someone found me with helen hill murder, so they were also looking for me, in a way, but so many people have written about it that you'd have to be really dedicated to find a site this low-traffic (less than 100 visits this week, and that's counting all of my own). I get what's behind that search, though, since I've been through a lot of screens of google results trying to find every scrap that was written about her. Helen inspired that kind of dedication. Being touched by violent crime inspires that kind of obsession. (And if you found me that way and you're still reading, I consider you a friend.)

Others are baffling. How long would you have to plug away at "her cast" to find me? The same with stitches pediatrician.

Here are two that I couldn't guess where I'd be on the line-up, so I tried them myself:

oxygen rhymes, I'm towards the bottom of screen number four.

and, drumroll please,

if you google poopy pie, I'm smack-dab in the middle of the first screen. And as soon as I publish this I'll probably be even higher. I guess this is a mommyblog.

Z. still occasionally tells Puppy Pie "I put you in a poopy potty," and goes from there.

4 comments:

niobe said...

Do you ever get the feeling that those things may be -- dare I say -- not entirely accurate?

Phantom Scribbler said...

My proudest moment as a blogger was the day that I discovered that I was the sole return on a Google search for "Foucaultian poopies." I was so proud, I made it a label.

I get a really disturbing number of searches for cliff notes of children's books. Who on earth needs cliff notes for Dr. Seuss???

S. said...

Niobe, I've had the same suspicion. According to these reports, Phantom has left New England because they don't think anyone from any New England state has hit this url since Tuesday.

But Phantom, maybe you're being very clever about your geographic pseudonymity! I have some recent hits from various parts of Australia. Unless they're the folks investigating poopy pies. (Delurk if you don't want people talking about you in front of you, people.)

Phantom Scribbler said...

Heh. The Boston thing is just a cover. I'm actually commenting from underneath a beach umbrella on a beach in Bermuda.