Blogs and search engines

[Marsha Lynn]

I gave up blogging a few months ago. Too busy. Too one-sided and lonely. Not like NazNet where other people draw me into interesting conversations and I'm just one member of a group discussion.

However, it turns out that, once established, blogs have a life of their own. When I came back after a couple of months, my blog was still getting around six hits a day, mostly coming off the search engines. Somehow my blog has ended up being a top hit for certain searches.

1. Yahoo search for "front porches": 2 out of 2,560,000.

2. Google search for "influence of books": 1 out of 77,200,000

3. Yahoo search for "why go to church twice on Sunday": 1 out of 7,900,000

4. Google search for "empty-nest syndrome": 30 out of 389,000 (even though the word "syndrome" doesn't appear in the referenced post).

I added a couple of entries and started paying more attention to the traffic on my blog. Now I'm noticing a new search showing up: A Yahoo search for "teamwork and leadership" - 1 out of 8,070,000.

So I currently have the #1 Yahoo hit for "teamwork and leadership", but it's not even a good post. It's me venting about something that happened two years ago. And in trying to protect the innocent/guilty, the post is basically too cryptic to be of any value to anyone.

For those of you who blog, do you ever write specifically for people coming off the search engines? Does the fact that we can so easily put our words in front of a constant stream of strangers give us an obligation to write with greater intent to do ministry? Does having the #1 Yahoo hit for "teamwork and leadership" give me any responsibility for fixing up a random post from two years ago? Or writing something new and editing a link into the old post?

I added a new entry this week. It's called Postmodernism and Absolute Truth (http://marshalyn.blogspot.com/2007/11/postmodernism-and-absolute-truth.html). Based on observed traffic patterns and the "not quite there" hits that a search for that phrase currently brings, I'm expecting it to generate more traffic from the search engines.

As I wrote here (http://www.naznet.com/community/showthread.php?t=693), I don't know how search engines work, and I struggle to comprehend why people follow links to random blogs from their search results, but the fact is that they do. And apparently, with an infinite number of subjects in the world on which to search, an infinite number of people can have the #1 hit for at least one or two of them.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for here in terms of response. I'm mainly just expressing my amazement over the stream of strangers silently reading my blog entries and wondering what response, if any, I should make to the realization that it's happening.

Marsha

PS: My apologies to Scott for starting a new thread on an old subject, but the original one (http://www.naznet.com/community/showthread.php?t=3289) was on the technology board and this has little to do with the technological aspect of blogging/search engines.

[Brad Mercer]

I stopped blogging several times for exactly the same reasons as you. Then Australia and cancer gave me plenty of readers and plenty to write about.

The weird thing is that it isn't those topics that keeps people coming back repeatedly. It's pinto beans. Back nearly a year ago I posted an entry about finally finding a source of pinto beans, and I didn't mention what that source was, exactly. So I've had this steady stream to this day of mostly people from the southwestern United States to the Brisbane area who are desperately and unsuccessfully searching for pinto beans. A couple of months ago, I arbitrarily (I did explain in the entry why I was doing it, but it was arbitrary in that it had nothing to do with the rest of the entry.), in the middle of a blog entry about cancer or the new church planting efforts, entered the search terms "pinto beans, Brisbane, Australia", and then the name and location of the natural food store where I get them, just to make it easier on those who are doing that search and hitting my blog. I'm not really interested in going further than that, though, to accommodate them, except by doing what I have been doing, which is just give them the info individually as they ask for it.

Brad


I gave up blogging a few months ago. Too busy. Too one-sided and lonely. Not like NazNet where other people draw me into interesting conversations and I'm just one member of a group discussion.

However, it turns out that, once established, blogs have a life of their own. When I came back after a couple of months, my blog was still getting around six hits a day, mostly coming off the search engines. Somehow my blog has ended up being a top hit for certain searches.

1. Yahoo search for "front porches": 2 out of 2,560,000.

2. Google search for "influence of books": 1 out of 77,200,000

3. Yahoo search for "why go to church twice on Sunday": 1 out of 7,900,000

4. Google search for "empty-nest syndrome": 30 out of 389,000 (even though the word "syndrome" doesn't appear in the referenced post).

I added a couple of entries and started paying more attention to the traffic on my blog. Now I'm noticing a new search showing up: A Yahoo search for "teamwork and leadership" - 1 out of 8,070,000.

So I currently have the #1 Yahoo hit for "teamwork and leadership", but it's not even a good post. It's me venting about something that happened two years ago. And in trying to protect the innocent/guilty, the post is basically too cryptic to be of any value to anyone.

For those of you who blog, do you ever write specifically for people coming off the search engines? Does the fact that we can so easily put our words in front of a constant stream of strangers give us an obligation to write with greater intent to do ministry? Does having the #1 Yahoo hit for "teamwork and leadership" give me any responsibility for fixing up a random post from two years ago? Or writing something new and editing a link into the old post?

I added a new entry this week. It's called Postmodernism and Absolute Truth (http://marshalyn.blogspot.com/2007/11/postmodernism-and-absolute-truth.html). Based on observed traffic patterns and the "not quite there" hits that a search for that phrase currently brings, I'm expecting it to generate more traffic from the search engines.

As I wrote here (http://www.naznet.com/community/showthread.php?t=693), I don't know how search engines work, and I struggle to comprehend why people follow links to random blogs from their search results, but the fact is that they do. And apparently, with an infinite number of subjects in the world on which to search, an infinite number of people can have the #1 hit for at least one or two of them.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for here in terms of response. I'm mainly just expressing my amazement over the stream of strangers silently reading my blog entries and wondering what response, if any, I should make to the realization that it's happening.

Marsha

PS: My apologies to Scott for starting a new thread on an old subject, but the original one (http://www.naznet.com/community/showthread.php?t=3289) was on the technology board and this really has little to do with the technological aspect of blogging/search engines.

[Marsha Lynn]

Two hours after you posted here, Google picked this up. You now have the top three hits for "pinto beans Brisbane" out of 34,800 on Google -- your two blog posts plus your post here. NazNet must have the search engines crawling all over it.

:eek:

[Roy Richardson]

I get a ton of hits on mine, which is still active, about the Detroit World Outreach church (http://reformedposer.blogspot.com/2007/03/you-have-to-be-kidding-me.html), which purchased a $4 million parsonage near Detroit. I also get a fair number of hits off of the REM song "Everybody Hurts (http://reformedposer.blogspot.com/2005/06/everybody-hurts.html)" which I will preach on some day.

It is odd how people find you. I had a regular visitor in Japan via the Asbury Seminary Blog (http://www.asburyblog.net/), where I was attending seminary.

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

The search engine "recipes" are closely guarded secrets. Otherwise, shrewd web masters would be able to manipulate their web pages and skew the results.

I have had the impression that a newly edited web page, or blog post gets a higher ranking than an old one. However, that is changed if a page has lots of links from other websites. Also, I think that, when a search is done, if the searcher picks a page in the results, that bumps it up a bit.

My guess is that the post here that quickly showed up in a Google search was more a result of timing. The search spider just happened upon NazNet soon after it was done.

[Roland Hearn]

I get a ton of hits on mine, which is still active, about the Detroit World Outreach church (http://reformedposer.blogspot.com/2007/03/you-have-to-be-kidding-me.html), which purchased a $4 million parsonage near Detroit. I also get a fair number of hits off of the REM song "Everybody Hurts (http://reformedposer.blogspot.com/2005/06/everybody-hurts.html)" which I will preach on some day.

It is odd how people find you. I had a regular visitor in Japan via the Asbury Seminary Blog (http://www.asburyblog.net/), where I was attending seminary.

This is a little off subject but I have used "Everybody Hurts" a couple of times Roy. We created a picture montage slide show of hurting faces and lonely looking people. It is a very powerful reflection of the reality of life, it is a cry for help and hope and makes a great springboard for the gospel. Besides I think REM are brilliant.

[Roy Richardson]

This is a little off subject but I have used "Everybody Hurts" a couple of times Roy. We created a picture montage slide show of hurting faces and lonely looking people. It is a very powerful reflection of the reality of life, it is a cry for help and hope and makes a great springboard for the gospel. Besides I think REM are brilliant.

That is fodder for a new thread I believe :basic05