Thursday, December 20, 2007

how people find my blog

I have Google Analytics on my blog which collects data on where my readers come from and how they get here. I find this collection of data fascinating. I can look at a map of the world, a country, or a particular state to see where most of my visitors are from. Really it's not exactly where you're from, it's where your internet service provider is from which is often different from where you are. I can view my daily traffic over time and see which other sites have linked to my blog and how many people have come to my blog via theirs.

One of the most interesting things for me is the search terms that lead people to my blog and how much time people spend on my site. I can tell that some of you (but I have no idea who) consistently find my blog my Googling 'aspiring ecologist.' Many new visitors (=new IP addresses I think) have found my blog by Googling for various things related to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). Another common search category is related to my post about plastic trash in the ocean. Honestly I'm really surprised that so many people come to my blog because of that post. Some other search strings have something to do with ecology or ecologists.

My favorite search string that led someone to my blog is 'find field biologist boyfriend'. LOL! I dated another biologist (a cute bird nerd- aka ornithologist) in college for a minute but ended up with philosopher Jon instead. Good luck to my possible reader out there looking for a field biologist boyfriend!

3 comments:

Anne-Marie said...

Lucky you, boyfriend-seekers aren't too bad...according to my Google Analytics records one of the top five search strings for my blog is "insect porn." Yikes. ;)

Paulina said...

Like you, the trash vortex is my most common search link, but like anne-marie, I get a lot of porn traffic because one of my posts contained "nude" and "tube" next to each other in the title. Apparently that's a porn site...

Paulina said...

I wonder what insect porn is... maybe I'll google it?