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Led Back To My Blog, or How I Did My Blog A Disservice
Image via CrunchBase
One of the nice features of WordPress.com is that it tracks the search terms that have led people to your blog. It will do this for the day, the week, the month, the quarter, the year, and all time. Using that, you can discover what people are looking for when their search led them to your blog.
Which is how I have done my own blog a disservice.
For anyone who has looked through my blog, they will have figured out that it is… eclectic at best. With the exception of Thursdays when I post my comic picks of the week, and Saturdays when I post a song that I like, the rest is a mish mash of quotes, lists and personal musings on whatever I feel like talking about.
In one such personal musing, I talked about the five famous people who would get me on a roller coaster (the list has since been modified and expanded… which makes me think I should post that again). A few other posts have dealt with the Facebook game Marvel Avengers Alliance, which I had played for a while but stopped… even before I cut down my Facebook time.
Now, the Facebook game posts are not really an issue, or at least not as bad of an issue as other posts. But, even today, a great number of search terms on my all time list have led people to my blog.
The problem lies not with those posts. The problem lies with the one post about the five women who could get me to ride a roller coaster. The post itself was an innocuous list of five celebrities, along with pictures of each one. There was nothing all that scandalous about it… unless you count the fact that Paris Hilton was on the list because she could pay me enough to ride a roller coaster (I really don’t like roller coasters).
At least the original post was not meant to be all that scandalous. But, given the number of search terms that WordPress.com has said have led to my blog, you would think otherwise. It was something I had noticed before, but came to my attention when I saw the search terms for Monday. From an innocent post listing actress Elisha Cuthbert as someone who could get me on a roller coaster spawned the top search term for that Monday. At least, it spawned part of it.
Naturally, when you see a search term like “elisha cuthbert hot nude” on your list (first no less), you get curious as to what else may have led to your blog. I was no different. So I checked the seven-day. There is was in the third position. Really, it was tied with three other search terms.
On to the 30 day, where I found that same search again, this time eighth and tied with a whole slew more search terms. The quarterly was rather tame, but the year was a bit more shocking. Out of the top ten search terms, three featured either the word “naked” or “nude.” The all-time was the same. But reading through the list were more items, “kim bauer nude,” “paris hilton playboy,” even an “amy lee bikini.”
At this point, there is not much I can do to change this trend, except maybe take down the original post. But then, why should I? There was nothing really bad about the original post. And, let’s face it, it does not hurt to have the extra traffic on my blog.
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.
Dec 21, 2012...
What could have happened...
What people on the Internet said happened...
What actually happened...
This pretty much tells it all.
Another Closed Down
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I closed my Google+ Profile today. When asked why I was doing so, I submitted the following answer:
I rarely use Google+ for anything. I know maybe three people on it, and they never use Google+. It does not connect to things like WordPress for it to be any use as a promotional vehicle. What little content that is on here is available through other sources (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.) that Google+ is redundant.
Related articles
- How to Delete Your Google+ Account (vikitech.com)
- Is Google Plus Dead On Arrival? (nowsourcing.com)
Contemplating a Shared World Project
Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)
As regular readers may know, I have a couple of other blogs sites adjoined to this one. One is storehouse of some of my half finished stories and such (which may or may not be merged into this site in some way, I have yet to decide). The other was an attempt to create a blog-based fiction story which I never really felt all that comfortable with. That probably has something to do with it being a zombie story, and it was devolving into everything I hate about zombie stories.
(Links to both sites are in my title bar under “MY OTHER BLOGS”)
That being said, I was considering the possibility of just trashing the zombie blog (merging it into the story storehouse) and recreating it as a shared world superhero blog, strictly for fun. The first elements of this blog will probably be the rewrite elements of one of my NaNoWriMo projects, the (obviously) superhero one I have written about here as well.
I’m wondering a few things about this. First, is there any real interest in such a site? Secondly, is there any real interest in anyone other than myself contributing to this site? If there is any interest, I can go over parameters of the “universe” this shared world would follow.
Please let me know if there is any interest, thank you.
Disconnected
I just found out that somehow, my blog’s connection with Facebook got disconnected. That could explain some things.
Opinions Wanted
Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I have been considering switching themes for this blog.
Naturally, not wanting to mess up this blog with a switch that I would regret, I created a private blog that mirrors this blog. That way, I can try out different themes without messing up this blog.
At the moment, I am trying out the new Oxygen template and currently would like some feedback on how my site looks using it. The mirror site can be seen here. I want to hear anything about the site, good and bad.
Please leave any feedback you have on this post, or through my feedback page.
Thank you.
Another Question to the Audience
Remembering passwords (Photo credit: hardeep.singh)
I have three posts on here that I have put passwords on. At the time I wrote each, I felt that they were deeply personal. But, by the same token, I did not put in a whole lot of thought into what the passwords were. Anyone who could figure out the passwords (and, again, the passwords were not all that cryptic) could actually see the posts.
Anyhow, I’ve been thinking about these posts and wondering if it is really helping me to keep these posts semi-private, to the point that I’ve been thinking of removing the password protection and opening them up for anyone to read.
Thus, I once more turn to you, the audience. Should I remove the passwords and make these posts open for anyone and everyone to read? Or, should I keep the passwords in place, making the posts available only to those I give the passwords to… or whoever figures out the passwords (again, they are not all that difficult to figure out)?
Question for the Regulars
As you undoubtedly know, I have a couple of side blogs for my writing which I, in all honesty, have not kept up. Thus, I pose this question to you.
Should I slowly merge these two blogs into this one? Those blog posts would replace regular entries on this one until the posts are used up.
