Search Engine Follies
This morning, I decided to upgrade my account with SiteMeter, in order to get a better grasp on the traffic coming to my site. Some of the stats that I’ve collected today have been. . . um, peculiar.
I’m not sure how far back the records are going, but it’s further than since I upgraded the account. I think it’s a rolling 24 hours, which I find annoying. The stats have proved to be highly volatile, with some sites “losing” refers, and rankings changing constantly. Another major disagreement I’ve got with this service is that it counts the website itself as a referrer. That means if you go to the index page, then click one of the “continue” links, or a category/archive, Houblog itself is recorded as the referrer–and every page is considered a seperate referrer. I’m getting annoyed with that and I’m not sure I’m getting my money’s worth, but I’ll see how it works out.
Anyway, the top referring non-search engine to my site today was a new blog not even a week old, Gumbo Grousing. After reading up on it a bit, I decided the author had a twisted sense of humor, and added him to my blogroll as well.
The fifth (or seventh, depending on when I looked) leading referrer overall is Steven Den Beste’s Chizumatic. That reminds me, I need to link him under anime as well (his archive is linked under Analysis) . (EDIT: Actually I needed to add the category!) One thing that Sitemeter’s stats do is track the page the referral came from, not just the site. So if I get a sudden spike from a site, I can tell if it’s because I was mentioned in a post as opposed to being added to a blogroll.
There were a couple from BlogHouston and Off the Kuff mixed in there as well, along with a couple of search engines.
Speaking of searches, there were two unusual things I noticed in the stats. First, the most common search engine referral to me right now is not Google. It’s Overture, which appears to be the engine run by Yahoo/SBC/AT&T.
Second, aside from the site name, the number one word used to find Houblog today was:
Obviously, I need to blog about anime some more. 
April 24th, 2006 at 7:42 am
I’m not sure how I got to be top referrer, does the title come with a belt like in boxing? Keep up the good work, you obviously have more inside scoop while I’m just a malcontent who found a soupbox. Thanks for the link.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Sorry, no belt, trophy, or kewpie doll. I’m all about cheap here at Houblog! As for inside scoop, well, I’m limited by what I can risk. There’s a point past which some politicians would pay the price to squash a critical blogger, and I prefer to stay on the near side of it. It’s not like my tip jar is ringing up the donations. :-/ I’ve had to duck twice now, and I’m not happy about it; that’s one reason my blogging has been slow lately. (The other is personal, ill family member.)
As for the referrals, this is what the raw report looks like:
9 houblog.com 5.9%
5 gumbogrousing.blogspot.com 3.3%
4 google.com 2.6%
3 images.google.com 2.0%
2 bloghouston.com 1.3%
2 bloghouston.net 1.3%
2 denbeste.nu 1.3%
2 houstonist.com 1.3%
1 dsl.sbc.yahoo.com 0.7%
1 images.google.com.mx 0.7%
1 images.google.com.sa 0.7%
1 overture.com 0.7%
1 search.aol.com 0.7%
1 search.peoplepc.com 0.7%
1 sitemeter.com 0.7%
Google is split up into several different categories, Overture has almost dropped off the list since I first looked, and Bloghouston is split into 2 groups. My traffic is currently way down due to the lack of posting; I expect that most of it is normally driven by BlogHouston.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:22 am
That was the site referral above. If I pull the page referral list, it gets weirder. Totally different number of reports. I just don’t get this…..
18 http://www.overture.com/d/sear…_yh_nzaddrbar&Keywords=houblog 6.6%
8 http://gumbogrousing.blogspot.com/ 2.9%
7 http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/else/Links.shtml 2.6%
7 http://houblog.com/wp/index.php/2006/260 2.6%
5 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=houblog 1.8%
4 http://dsl.sbc.yahoo.com/ 1.5%
3 http://images.google.com/imgre…rt=15&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpanty 1.1%
2 http://houblog.com/wp/index.php/2006/145 0.7%
2 http://houblog.com/wp/index.php/2006/165 0.7%
2 http://houblog.com/wp/index.php/2006/261 0.7%
2 http://images.google.com.sa/im…start=23&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dho 0.7%
2 http://search.peoplepc.com/sea…onse hec local news broadcast 0.7%
2 http://www.bloghouston.com 0.7%
2 http://www.bloghouston.com/ 0.7%
2 http://www.bloghouston.net/ 0.7%
2 http://www.google.com/search?s…DBUS:2006-10,DBUS:en&q=houblog 0.7%
1 http://houblog.com/wp/wp-admin/profile.php 0.4%
1 http://houstonist.com 0.4%
1 http://houstonist.com/ 0.4%
Note Overture’s dominance on this list, with gumbogrousing.com and denbeste.nu running hard for second. Then Blog Houston is split up 3 ways or it would be right behind you. This is really annoying. What am I supposed to learn from this crap?
April 24th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
If you want a lot of search engine hits, post something about “hot midget sex”. Based on my refers, there seem to be a lot of people out there interested in that, for some strange reason.
April 24th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Thanks, you probably just caused me to get an extra twenty referrals. Heh. :-/
Of course there’s always “lesbian twins” too. Well, maybe not. But I could wish.
Edit: As for search terms, here’s that report…
165 Not referred from a search engine 90.7%
9 houblog 4.9%
2 panty 1.1%
1 t 0.5%
1 panty surprise 0.5%
1 houston 911 response hec local news broadcast 0.5%
1 ho 0.5%
1 girl 0.5%
1 bad teen girls 0.5%
I got a referral from the letter “t”? t? I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t one of the really boring letters like d, g, or m. Or the weirdos like v, x, and z. And thank my lucky stars it wasn’t the dreaded “q”!!!!! I might never live it down if q started sending me traffic.