One of the Blogger features I really enjoy is the ability to look at your site's visitation stats and see what search keywords most commonly direct traffic to your blog. When looking at the all-time totals, these searches tend to be pretty much in line with the content, but it if you look by the day or week, you will often find really odd searches that lead people to your blog. For example, I don't find it terribly surprising that "zz top" is by far the all-time number one search leading people to my blog. No, I don't mention them much. I have named them in a post or two, though, and this blog does have "Beards" in the name. Plus, it focuses mostly on music and there are likely to be more people searching for ZZ Top than for the relatively more obscure bands I usually write about in my lists and reviews. Top searches like "zakk wylde beard" (#2), "metal beards" (#6), and "ensiferum logo" (#4) are also pretty unsurprising. Below, however, is a list of some of my favorite less-expected searches that have lead people to my blog.
10. "retro futurism"
This is listed in my profile interests, but considering how infrequently I mention it and how little it has to do with anything on my blog, I'm surprised by how consistently it ends up in the search keywords lists.
9. "goat beard men"
I'm picturing Mephistopheles.
8. "sullen fallen angel tattoo"
Mostly because I have no idea how such a search would lead anybody here. I've mentioned tattoos like once or twice ever, and I must be forgetting something, because that "sullen fallen angel" part has me stumped. Incidentally, I get a fair scattering of wizard or viking related tattoo searches, too.
7. "retro sci fi posters"
I know exactly which post is responsible for this. I just can't help feeling that this blog isn't even close to what those people were looking for, though.
6. "dumbledore quotes gandalf"
Aside from one post about Merlin I did over a year ago, I don't think I've ever mentioned either of these two before, let alone anything to do with a quote.
5. "the little one starcraft beard"
I'm actually mostly interested in this one because I recently saw the YouTube video which I think was responsible for these searches. TLO aka The Little One is a Starcraft II player who recently grew a beard. In one of his newest videos, popular SC2 commentator Husky told people that they should Google said beard.
4. "beard fetish"
I know why I get these, since I made a post about this once. It's still funny sounding, though.
3. "brett keisel shirtless"
Umm, yeah . . . I don't know why people looking for shirtless photos of a football player are ending up here.
2. "pahrump snoof"
wtf? I mean, I used to live in a town called Pahrump, which I guess I must have mentioned here at some point. I still have no clue what the hell a "snoof" is, though.
1. "worlds longest pubic hair"
I don't really need to explain why I find this funny, do I?
I consistently get a lot of people searching for some permutation of "top 100 metal songs," because I did a series on that many years ago, when the world of metal seemed much smaller to me.
ReplyDeleteBut back in the days before my blog took its current shape, I would do little news round-ups of various funny stories I found. There was one where I mentioned the Sri Lankan government considering a reduction in the age of consent, and a story about a 9 year old with a gun, and it led to my occasionally getting traffic from people looking for child porn. So, yeah, that can happen.