Whether it’s for vanity’s sake or not, I regularly get a kick out of looking at the stats for this blog and seeing where the visitors are coming from. The vast majority come from searches, and when I track back the visitor I can see exactly what they were searching for when they found this blog. Here are some of the search terms that I rank high for in Google or Yahoo. My rank is in the parentheses next to the term and some comments after a couple:
- How to torment neighbors (3) – I’m really not that bad.
- Kid Rock unedited version of American Bad ass video (7) – No idea why I’m on this one.
- increase wi-fi range (7) – More traffic from this one post than almost any other.
- HOAX STEVE JOBS COMMENCEMENT SPEECH (4)
- boss cheating (5) – Oops.
- NOrther Virginia contractors (1) – I guess typos pay off sometimes!
- allure jeans (1) – No I don’t wear them.
- worst 10 jobs in america (13)
- not bad funny stuff (4)
- viagra alzheimer’s research humor (1) – This one kind of disturbs me.
- drink more ovaltine (1) – The folks at Ovaltine must hate me.
Again I have to say, "Behold the power of blogs."
Discover more from Befuddled
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Befuddled 
Hey John — It has taken me a while, but I think I’ve kicked my addiction to web stats. For the most part. It’s a definite psychological thing, I think looking at stats about you is a quick reward, and who doesn’t like a quick reward?
Oh yeah, it’s a total ego thing. Part of the fun beyond that, though, is seeing what some people search for. I can only imagine what gets seen at Google or Yahoo on any given day.
On another note, at my last publishing job (from 2000-2002) I was responsible for tracking our web stats. I remember being frustrated at the inconsistencies and just plain crapiness of the log tracking software we were using, and I think it was considered top of the line then. I came to the conclusion that guesstimates was about as good as I was going to do, and I just started trying to eyeball our visitor tracking. That’s when I got in the habit of tracking back specific visitors based on URLs or IP numbers, and some of the stuff I found would make me laugh for hours.
I’m afraid I’m knee-deep in stats addiction. Back when I was designing small sites, people would ask me for counters and I’d tell them that they meant nothing. Now you can find out so much it’s scary!
One day I hope to kick the habit. But right now it’s fun!
Thanks for the comment Laurie. It is an addictive little habit isn’t it?