The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Found through the search engines

I’ve been checking the visitor stats for the site recently, and one of the most fascinating aspects is, not how many visitors I’ve had, but the last page they were on before turning up here.

The fun part is when they have come in by search engine, because then I can see what terms were being used, and see where I rank for those terms.

So, for example, if you type in “Plum Chutney” to MSN, this blog actually comes up 7th out of over 100,000 entries. With “Gay Hitcher” these ramblings come up 3rd. I can only think it must be a disappointment for the searcher. And type in “Lada Owner’s Club” and I am actually listed above the official Lada Owner’s Club!

My favourite, however, is that “example of virile manhood” brings me in 2nd only to an article about Clint Eastwood in ‘Unforgiven’

11 comments

Unknown said...

That does sound like a fun way to spend some time. Pray tell, how does one go about tracking visitors like that?

Kim Ayres said...

You need a visitor counter. There are a few free packages about. If you look over on my sidebar, below the Blogger logo, you'll see that I have Sitemeter and Statcounter. Both measure the number of visitors and give visitor stats in slightly different ways.

You can click on to sitemeter right now if you want and you'll see a stat summary. If you click on the menu option on the right which says "By Referrals", it will take you to a page where you can see the last pages people were on before they arrived.

Unknown said...

I was just about to ask the same thing....thanks for the answer Kim,,,I'm going to add one to our blogs.

BStrong said...

I like doing the same thing Kim. Every once in a while I'll click on an address from the referral list which is basically the address from where that particular visitor came from and sure enough it's a Porn blog. How fun:)

Cheers,
B

BStrong said...

Kim,
I won't be around to blog tomorrow so I just wanted to wish you a very happy birthday.

Cheers,
B

Siddharth said...

:) :) :)...lol!!!how do u track all this!!i never tracked my site..maybe i should.this tacking business sounds real fun!

Unknown said...

I wish I knew what the secret was to getting more traffic to my site. For a while in was increasing magnificently. When I changed the design of the site, everything has slowed up.

It would help if I got back to posting more frequently.

Kim Ayres said...

I should have said "menu option on the left..." in my above comment, but I'm sure you're all intelligent enough to have worked it out :)

bstrong - thanks for the early brithday wishes!

siddharth - see above comments for tracking

el-branden - I'm not claiming any great knowledge, but as a general rule, from what I can make out, the more sites you visit and comment on, the more you are likely to get people visiting your site. If they like what they see they'll come back and might even link. I don't think it's much more complicated than that. However, with your photography site in particular, there are probably blogs or sites dedicated to photos that may well link to you.

Onlinefocus Team said...

A Happy Birthday for tomorrow. The best is yet to come... !

Gyrobo said...

Oooh. It looks like you've got some comment spam, there. You should enable Blogger's word verification filter. It's on the comments tab, and once you enable it, you'll never have to worry about comment spam again! Unless, of course, they invent a spambot that can read. And when that happens we're all doomed.

Kim Ayres said...

Thanks Gyrobo - spam now removed. I'm trying to stay off the word verificaton thing as it's a pain in the arse sometimes, however, it might not be long before I have to put it in place.

Yesterday I disovered some spammers putting their messages into the comments of old posts. I'd got a copy of their post in my e-mail, but I then had to rake through a couple of dozen posts before I was able to find and remove them.

Any more like that and I will be following your advice.


Thanks for the birthday wishes Chris!

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