Wacky Blog Stats, Keyword Searches and a Note for the Reader Who Certainly Didn't Find the Right Answer

My blog stats have been peculiar over the last 36 hours. I'll just say that there's been "oddly excessive traffic." Has anyone else noticed this with your own blog?

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While on the same topic of blog stats, some of you might recall the post I wrote a while back concerning strange search words readers have used to find my blog. Well, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone, who's read more than three of my posts, that readers might still (occasionally) hit my blog with some seriously out-of-context search word strings, for example:

"there's a turd in the herd"
or
"fat guy wearing a cardigan"

While it's doubtful that any of these searches amounted to more than a passing blog glimpse - and I'm totally okay with that - I just hope the people eventually found what they were looking for. (Because they certainly didn't find it here.)

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But on a serious note, I am a bit concerned for the reader who took a detour to my blog yesterday with the following search string:

"dog licking private areas constantly leaves puddles of liquid"

So with that, I say:

Dear Accidental Reader,

If by any chance, you are still searching for help (and note that I am not formally educated in any form of medicine whatsoever), I think that your dog might actually need to see a veterinarian (or therapist) about that. I hope it all turns out okay.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

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Has anyone found your blog using "strange" search words lately?

This blog is not about sweaters, but it is a little about poop.

Not a sweater blog,
but not an anti-dude blog either.

And that title, friends, is for all the people who accidentally hit on my blog when googling (or yahooing, binging, etc.) the search term "cardigan sweaters".    :^)

Not that anyone has ever done that, since my blog stats don't indicate anyone has actually ever found me using keywords like "cardigan sweater" or "knitting". Well, except for the one person who was looking for the "cardigan chronicles blog," which is actually a blog about sweaters (but that could've been news to the person searching, since they went ahead and clicked into my obviously-not-about-sweaters blog).

Hey, do you like the photo?

Note: Any men reading this (ahem, Ron) can feel free to abstain from answering that question...or not (I repeat, not for you, Ron).

I was originally going to use a frumpy cardigan on a mannequin photo, but decided I like this photo better. It's much more colorful.

Did anyone happen to notice that yesterday was my 100th post? No?

Yeah, I waited until today to say anything because I was actually conducting an experiment to see if anyone would notice. That's okay; I didn't notice either (not true), and my feelings are not hurt (that's true). I was just waiting to use my 100th post as an excuse to write this incredibly random, long-winded, overly sarcastic post about sweaters and (soon-to-be-about) poop, and well, Sunday was not a good day for me to do that.

So the handful of people who've been following my blog since the beginning might remember (and wish they didn't) a post I did about deer poop and the safety of deer in my yard. Did you know that corgis require a mystery nutrient contained in deer poop in order to survive? (By the way, I'm looking for investors in my new venture to bottle and sell the deer poop in my yard as a corgi dietary supplement. There's enough of a supply to keep every corgi in Virginia, USA in good health.) :)

Um yeah, so that wasn't one of my better posts. (More on that later.)

Back to search keywords.

Have you ever looked at the different keywords your readers are using to find your blog? All the "experts" will tell you that if you want to help people find your blog, you need to make it easy for search engines (like Google) to find you. And so in order to do that, even though it might seem obvious, you should really know what kind of readers you want to attract.  As for me, I'd like to attract corgi owners (both breeds really), dog and cat owners, people who enjoy reading about dogs and cats...and complete nonsense. If I get a stray person who likes to read about sweaters, or ice cream, or even eating ice cream while wearing a sweater, well, that's just the cherry on top (pun intended).

So as I've obviously been known to do now and then, I looked at the search keywords in my stats a few weeks ago and amongst the expected "chronicles of cardigan," "jon farleigh and dewi cardigan" and numerous variations wherein, for some reason this one seemed a little peculiar:

"deer dung soup"

And to be clear that this was not some sort of Google stat FAIL, I went ahead and googled it myself (as if the folks at Google don't already think my search history is bizarre), and whatdaya know? There's my little blog (on like page 13). WTFudge?

Yes, I'd blogged about deer and poop in the same post (see above), but I never once used the word "dung," (but, come to think of it, I did do a post about soup - but NOT dung soup)!!!!  I repeat: WTFudge?!

So do I consider it a cherry on top that I got a reader who might have been looking for recipes for DEER DUNG SOUP?  Um, well, I dunno?! Would you??

Has anyone ever found your blog using an unconventional search keyword?


(Know what? Ironically, with this post I have just further optimized search engines to find my blog using the search keywords "sweater" and "dung." Neat.)