Earlier in the summer, I added a link to BlogFlux Mapstats on my website so that I could see where people came from who were looking at my two main blogs. Since I use the free version of Mapstats, I can only see the current day’s stats. And in those stats, I can also see the website the person came from if they linked to me from another site and also what search term they entered if they found me that way. (I can not, I repeat, I can not tell who someone is, so everyone is still anonymous to me!)
The search terms, especially, are interesting, so I tried out a few from the last few days to see for myself what came up.
Someone did a search on “Japanese digging knife”. Not such an unusual term, and it directed them to this post that I wrote earlier this summer about some of my sharp tools.
There was a search yesterday for “in dream book what is smelling onion”. Huh? I could not even begin to guess where that might lead someone, since I don’t remember posting too much about onions this past year. It led them to my post about what my grandparents grew in their vegetable gardens.
Yesterday, someone did a search for “caged fairies”. I had to go through about 8 screens of Google results before I found a link that took me to a search of all my sites about rabbits, with the first one being about caging the blueberries. I personally have never gone that far into Google trying to find something!
Someone else did a search for “furry insects”. That led me to my post on trying orchids, where I happened to also mention just a tiny little problem with mealybugs.
How about “rabbits chew Christmas lights”? Okay, I’ll bite (couldn’t resist). That search took me to the entire archives of November and if you page down all the way to November 21st, you’ll find a post where I mention rabbits chewing on plants all winter long.
“Write a book club newsletter”. That brought me to the November Garden Bloggers’ Book Club newsletter.
How about “rabbit jumped the fence”? That took me to the April archives. Somewhere in one of those posts I must have mentioned that I once saw a rabbit jump over a fence I installed to keep them out of my garden, because I did, I really did.
Try “Blogspot Vegetable Garden”… takes you to this post of about my vegetable garden.
Try “how to make big spider”… there is no way on my blog that I have included any instructions about how to make a big spider, but I did write about them here.
Try “winter garden images Indianapolis” entered by someone in Las Vegas, perhaps yearning for a good old-fashioned Hoosier winter? That took them right to my blog’s main page.
And for the Christmas season, apparently several people want to know about “Christmas Bell Story” as there were a couple of versions of that search. That took them to the story of the little bell we always hung on our Christmas tree as kids. I hope they enjoyed it!
And I made up this search: “new plant species pink flowers vine” and came to my post last April about a new plant.
I do wonder what people think about some of these items, how long they spend reading them, if they ever come back. They don’t often leave comments, so I’ll never know!
Carol,
Isn’t it interesting what people search for? Give statcounter a try, I think you’ll find it has everything you want.
http://www.statcounter.com/
Carol, do you by any chance have too much time on your hands?
I had one once, “fireplace smells like gas?”… YIKES!
Don
Just proves what a versatile person you are!!!
I have a statcounter on my blog and I use it to see how many unique visitors I get each day, and to see who visited without commenting, because I like to pay those bloggers a return visit. But I never look at the part that tells me what words people googled to get to my site. To tell the truth, I’m a little bit afraid to. 🙂
Carol, this post made me laugh out loud! First, at the searches people do, and secondly, at the thought of you researching this. That is something I’d do, too! Inquisitive, aren’t we?