Blogging’s Back End

UPDATE: No sooner than I wrote this than I've had one of my most hits ever this week. Tips for new bloggers, posting your about your posts in related comment thread on other blogs seems to work very well to drive traffic. I realized in many ways I've been sitting back and waiting for other people to find my stuff and link to it. But it's not rude to promote yourself in the right places in a polite way. I know I'm simply learning the baby steps that every other blogger has already learned but sometimes you gotta learn the basics on your own.

Ever since I installed a statcounter on my blog I’ve been kind of fascinated with the information it gives me. I don’t know if other bloggers talk about their visitors rates, maybe it’s like talking about how much money you make or how much sex you have. No matter how many visitors to your blog, you’ll always have both more and less than others. May is the first full month I have with a complete record of my blog’s visitors. I had 455 "first time visitors." I averaged 14.74 visitors a day...but in reality it was more like between 10-15 on days I did nothing and 20-30 on days I blogged. My highest trafficked day was actually April 30 (due to this post) when I had 51 hits. (update, I've now easily broken that by more than 100 hits)

However, one thing I notice, with even a little bit of self-promotion, sometimes as little as just posting on other people's blogs, I can boost my numbers.

Its barely miniscule and yet, the thought that even five people a day are interested in reading something I’ve written makes me happy. And I also realize that its within my power to increase that number.

But here’s something that until I started running my own website I didn’t really pay attention to. Part of what’s fascinating about the backend of a blog is getting to see other people’s google searches. It’s like a tiny snippet into other people’s psyche. One thing I notice about my blog is that, not unexpectedly, I get people searching for West Wing, Aaron Sorkin and feud with bloggers. Adam Corolla and Loveline make my blog pop up a lot because it was the original purpose of my blogging. (Although I don’t listen to Loveline anymore, not even old episodes).
But it’s the google searches of a few words that pique my interest the most. I’m very curious what the seeker was looking for. Anyway I'm not sure if I'm violating a professional code of ethics showing this (it does seem like an invasion of privacy in a way) but here’s a few that lead to my blog.

“does eating blueberry induce spontaneous abortion?”
From someone in India, which leads to this page.

“real scenes of glamorous people”
From someone in Pakistan which lead to this page.

“calories in outback mashed potatoes”
From America which lead to the last of my non-scrubbed weight watchers pages

“THE MOVIE AND SONG FROM PHENOMUNUM”
From America because apparently I have a soft spot for the word phenomenon

Other searches which turn up NewsCat.

“all women nuclear bunker movie”

“adam carolla rant on stamps”