Google seems to be a popular blogging topic. Mostly because Google seems to be quite broken right now, but also there are always people around amused at the search terms people use to find their blog or other strange things about Google.
Robin of Bumblebee Blog had a good idea. She suggested her readers post some of the the search terms people use to find their blogs, then she would then make a post linking to them after December 5th, so we could all compare. Here’s my contribution. I’ve been meaning to post about this anyway.
Of course people find us for the ‘right’ reasons, by searching on topics relating to this blog, but I’m going to give some examples here of some unexpected things.
The first thing to realize is Google has really changed a lot over the last few years, and search terms people were finding us with before are not the same as now, with one exception. Before and now, the single most common term people use to find this blog is ‘weed burner’. I made a post about weed burners very early on, and I seem to have become the main Internet information resource for weed burners.
As a result of using the word ‘weed’ in a popular post, and posting a little later about cannabis, we also have no end of people who find us wanting information on this:
pics of weed
weed
cheap weed
…
I also made a post about my 325 year old wooden house foundation needing to be repaired, and a lot of people started finding us looking for information on foundations:
Why is my house sinking?
sinking house foundation
How do I know if my foundation is bad?
What does a bad foundation look like?
For a long time, people were finding us searching on information about carrots:
Can you grow carrots in a bottle?
What do carrots look like when they are underground?
What types of carrots are there?
history of carrots
pictures of carrots
how do I grow carrots
To be clear, I’ve never particularly posted much here about carrots.
For a while a number of people were finding us searching for missing bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. The popularity of the topic led me to write a number of followup articles afterwards.
A number of people have found us recently looking for pictures of different kinds of garlic. This was part of the reason for posting the pictures recently, because there aren’t many pictures of garlic on the Internet.
By far in a way the biggest ‘Google event’ happened when Steph made this post on Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
For those of you not familiar with this beer, in recent years it’s probably become the most popular ‘alternative’ beer in the US, and it’s particularly popular among students. When Steph and I were students in Chico, California, where the brewery is located, we went on a tour of the brewery while it was still in a garage. A few days ago we bought our first bottle in Amsterdam! It still tastes the same after all these years. At 15 euros (about US$21) for six bottles it’s not going to become our daily beer again anytime soon, but it was still a nice treat.
Anyway, after Steph made this post people started ‘borrowing’ the picture by linking to it within blog posts, forums, myspace pages and so on. It’s all over the Internet now, and a search on Google images shows it’s now the most popular image above even those released by the brewery itself! The picture itself is probably the single largest source of Internet traffic for our domain, I think more than everything else combined.
Like I said, Google is broken now, but until recently it was including all of these links in our page rankings. I like to think I’m popular for other reasons, but surely this has had the greatest impact on our Google rankings!
Gack! I don’t know WHAT’S going to happen now that I have both the words “love” and “grow” quite a bit on my homepage. Perhaps the same sort of pernicious junk mail I get in my email spam folder. I can just see it now…..
Hi Patrick,
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for sending this along.
It seems that the searches that land here at BC are more serious information seekers–except for perhaps the beer drinkers.
Like you, I’m finding that looking at the Google searches gives me a good idea of what kind of information people want. When appropriate, I can also add some posts on these topics.
Right now, it seems to be all about Christmas gifts. Too bad my first post on the subject was about the crazy gifts my brother and I exchange. I’m sure that’s not very helpful!
–Robin (Bumblebee)
I confess that my topic vege-tating resulted in a number of searches on ‘tating’. I’ve no idea if it’s a real word or not, but promise to write more useful titles in the future.
Eating lilly pilly leaves – why would you want to? LOL.
And, there’s definitely no ‘map of where carrots are grown in Australia’ on my blog…but I’m number 10 on the google search ..what?
oh ok *oooops* on page 5 *grin*.
I was pointed by ericat as meme tag “victim” and you are one of my “victims” – please have go to look at my blog for the details on the 8 happy thoughts Meme…
blueblue, my guess would be that the “tating” thing isn’t really your fault. One thing I’ve learned from looking at Google searches is that people are abysmally poor spellers when they type in that little box; my guess would be they were searching for “tatting.”
I just posted a few days ago about a rather uhm, visceral Google search that found my site. I justly deserved it, though *laugh*
I changed my site’s name in part because Google was sending so many people to me who clearly didn’t want what I have to offer. It seems to have worked. Other than what Grendel’s mother does with her weekends, most searches that find me now have to do with Kuan Yin – entirely appropriate.
Not to mention the spam comments I miss now and then. Someone Googled me recently via “garden hair relaxing”. They found me from a spam comment with all sorts of off-topic lines (linked to who knows what site). Other search terms today include “aerial view of gorgeous yard”, “tomato taste test”, “salt marsh hay”, and “ugly bugs”. Who can predict what my little niche will be.
I’m not really sure that knowing these terms helps to figure out how to increase your traffic (if this is what you want to do). They often seem fairly random. I prefer to read my comments.
I was just checking my stats and see I have come up under the google search “multi-day bondage explained”. And I think I will leave that one there……….