Today’s post examines how people find my blog, as I thought it would be interesting to see how this blog generates traffic. WordPress has a built-in statistics tracker including what search terms people searched to click to the site—mainly from Google. I’m going to use two different days of stats.
Tuesday May 11, 2010
Total # of Views: 117
Most viewed pages:
* “Home page” involves any hit on any page number, so if someone looked at the first three pages of blog posts, that would count as three hits, not one.
So that’s a breakdown of what people viewed. It doesn’t represent Google searches exactly as some people visit the blog without searching for it while others click on links to pages from my Facebook. Here are the searches that people clicked to the blog on that day:
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| sleep | 5 |
| void ray | 4 |
| starcraft 2 void ray | 2 |
| let a kiss fool you | 2 |
| starcraft 2 void ray rush | 2 |
| void rays | 2 |
| on writing well abstract | 1 |
| protoss phoenix review | 1 |
| tumblr vs wordpress vs blogger | 1 |
| candide philosophy | 1 |
| how to get sc2 map editor | 1 |
| the use of rhetoric to obscure a lack of* | 1 |
| how to counter protoss void ray | 1 |
| moving matrix code | 1 |
| best defense against void starcraft | 1 |
| what is the map editor in starcraft ii c* | 1 |
| best against void ray | 1 |
| 649,740 | 1 |
| map editor starcraft 2 list of condition | 1 |
| starcraft 2 terran void ray counter | 1 |
| ap physics c how do you think you did | 1 |
| clever quips on census | 1 |
| sc2 editor triggers | 1 |
| warp ray | 1 |
| code matrix | 1 |
| this isnt a chair exist philosophy | 1 |
| tumblr not facebook | 1 |
| starcraft 2 void ray counter | 1 |
| low energy state of the brain | 1 |
| how to kill protoss void | 1 |
| how does protoss work | 1 |
| best protoss anti air unit starcraft 2 | 1 |
| protoss void ray counter | 1 |
| starcraft 2 map editor triggers | 1 |
| iblogo | 1 |
| laptop | 1 |
| starcraft 2 terrain editor | 1 |
| starcraft 2 stragegy void ray counter | 1 |
| starcraft ii void ray defense | 1 |
| mutalisk vs void ray | 1 |
| sc2 map editor changing unit model | 1 |
| tumblr vs facebook | 1 |
| the brain’s dark energy scientific ameri* | 1 |
| void ray rush | 1 |
| theory of knowledge ib books | 1 |
| starcraft 2 protoss best single unit | 1 |
| scientific american march 2010 | 1 |
| ib history exam paper 3 2010 | 1 |
| “warcraft iii” “comments” “overview” | 1 |
| nargaque | 1 |
* The stat-tracker cuts off the stored search string if it is really long.
Interestingly, people search for the Void Ray (from StarCraft II) a LOT. Quite a few searches total are on that.
The single most searched term was “sleep” and I found this rather odd. My only post that focuses on sleep is “Sleep: A Heuristic Examination,” but from the actual view table this post only had two views. The conclusion: When you see an individual blog post from Google search of a WordPress blog, it has both the given article AND the home page. Thus, of the five clicks, two were on the article and three were on the home page.
Other interesting search terms:
- let a kiss fool you—there’s a post called “Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You,” on a book with the same title.
- protoss phoenix review—the post “StarCraft II Unit Review: Protoss Void Ray” had the word “Phoenix” in it, so somehow this happened.
- 649,740—this looks completely random, but it’s actually the denominator of the chance that you get a royal flush, i.e. 1/649,740. Linked to “36.8% in Probability.”
- this isnt a chair exist philosophy—to one of the “Philosophy of The Matrix” posts.
Alright, let’s try a different date.
Sunday, May 9, 2010.
Total views: 225
This was the day I posted “Senioritis,” and its view count is mostly from Facebook. It would make sense that the Home page has the most views, but to someone new to this blog, the high number of views of “US Census 2010 Win” might be confusing. These hits are mostly from StumbleUpon. Digg was able to bring 80,000+ visitors in one day, but the traffic it generates dies down after about a week. StumbleUpon had a lower spike, at around 20,000 visitors, but is continuously generating traffic. Now, the search stats.
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| starcraft ii unit review | 3 |
| sc2 editor freeze unit animations | 2 |
| sleep | 2 |
| protoss ground unit anti air | 2 |
| nargaque | 2 |
| starcraft 2 map editor dota | 2 |
| marcus raichle | 2 |
| the great gatsby global statement | 2 |
| nargaque blog | 1 |
| how to beat void ray rush | 1 |
| hypothesis | 1 |
| starcraft 2 protoss counter void ray | 1 |
| starcraft 2 terran build order | 1 |
| caltech waitlist 2010 | 1 |
| starcraft 2 how to kill void ray | 1 |
| tweedledum and tweedledee contrariwise | 1 |
| starcraft 2 map editor script | 1 |
| “they were learning” alice quote | 1 |
| facebook post appear on tumblr | 1 |
| starcraft 2 map editor modify terrain | 1 |
| starcraft 2 map editor scripting | 1 |
| the use of rhetoric to obscure a lack of | 1 |
| how do void ray charges work? | 1 |
| iraq war tok | 1 |
| scarlet letter | 1 |
| how to use the void ray | 1 |
| phoenix rush protoss | 1 |
| what do the codes in the matrix mean | 1 |
| where can i find my starcraft 2 map edit | 1 |
| starcraft 2 air defense protoss | 1 |
| terran how to counter void ray rush | 1 |
| how void ray works | 1 |
| things that happened the week after next | 1 |
| kevin tian | 1 |
| wordpress.com (clash of the titans) | 1 |
| how to change upgrade in starcraft 2 map | 1 |
| “marcus e. raichle” | 1 |
| voidray | 1 |
| ib exams waiting for godot | 1 |
| starcraft 2 map editor triggers | 1 |
| my birthday is tomorrow | 1 |
| starcraft 2 protoss block ramp | 1 |
| ib may exam 2010 physics | 1 |
| counter protoss void ray | 1 |
| tumblr over facebook | 1 |
| counter massed void rays | 1 |
| cornell college of arts and sciences wai | 1 |
| starcraft 2 units protoss ray | 1 |
| void ray | 1 |
| void ray attack | 1 |
As the tables indicate, there is not really one exact search string that brings a lot of traffic to this blog. It’s very dispersed actually. There are quite a few bizarre ways people got to the site, for example: iraq war tok, hypothesis, my birthday is tomorrow, kevin tian, caltech waitlist 2010, and ib exams waiting for godot. Google seems to do a whole-blog search at times, because I do have Iraq and war in one article, and TOK in another, but not together. Similarly, I have IB exams in one article and Waiting for Godot in another, but someone got here by searching for both. Weird.
A Reasoner's Miscellany 