Marsha Lynn
8th November 2005, 08:37 PM (20:37)
I'm curious as to what search engines y'all favor. I put a counter on my 'blog that not only tells me how many people wander past but how they are getting there. (Thanks, Scott, for the Bravenet recommendation.) A substantial portion of them (maybe 30%?) are coming from MSN search results, usually having searched for either "front porches" or "empty nest syndrome".
This puzzles me for two reasons.
1. Often the "front porches" search lists my blog as the #2 hit(!) out of 40,000. Why?? It's more like #10 for the "empty nest syndrome" search but that's out of almost 100,000 hits. Why again?? The word "syndrome" does not occur anywhere in my blog. It's a false hit. Why would a search engine put a blog that doesn't even contain all the search terms so high on the list of hits?
2. Why don't people scan through their results and say, "Pshaw! That's a blog. That's not going to tell me how to build my front porch. It's just someone's stupid ramblings on the subject of front porches"? Why do I get people past every day who are doing some type of research and choose to follow a link to an obvious blog reference in the search results? I'm at blogspot.com, for goodness sakes. It's not like the hit looks at all like it would have good information. Occasionally they even wander around a little before quietly exiting without a word. How will they ever get their front porch built if they waste time reading random blogs?
The weirdest hit was for "Christianity and teamwork". My blog was hit #71. MSN picked up "Teamwork" from an entry title and added in "Christianity" from my link to "Christianity Today" in my "what I'm reading" list. Now there's a real good hit for you. Yet, this person wanting to know about Christianity and teamwork worked their way down to the 71st hit, which was a false hit and a blog AND FOLLOWED IT! Did they at least say, "Pshaw! What a waste!" after they arrived at my blog entry on the subject of teamwork?
Does anyone use MSN as a search engine by choice? Or are these people just typing "front porches" into the URL line and getting thrown into MSN as punishment for not knowing how browsers work. (They apparently don't know much about blogs either.)
There's this small temptation to write for the MSN search engine to drive up my hit count, throwing out enticing tidbits for the index. Just think what might happen if I actually used the word "syndrome" some day!
I did get one hit coming off an overseas version of yahoo one day. It linked to the front page of my blog rather than the actual post that drew the hit and there was no easy way to find the entry. That might be even worse than MSN.
:fav17
Marsha
This puzzles me for two reasons.
1. Often the "front porches" search lists my blog as the #2 hit(!) out of 40,000. Why?? It's more like #10 for the "empty nest syndrome" search but that's out of almost 100,000 hits. Why again?? The word "syndrome" does not occur anywhere in my blog. It's a false hit. Why would a search engine put a blog that doesn't even contain all the search terms so high on the list of hits?
2. Why don't people scan through their results and say, "Pshaw! That's a blog. That's not going to tell me how to build my front porch. It's just someone's stupid ramblings on the subject of front porches"? Why do I get people past every day who are doing some type of research and choose to follow a link to an obvious blog reference in the search results? I'm at blogspot.com, for goodness sakes. It's not like the hit looks at all like it would have good information. Occasionally they even wander around a little before quietly exiting without a word. How will they ever get their front porch built if they waste time reading random blogs?
The weirdest hit was for "Christianity and teamwork". My blog was hit #71. MSN picked up "Teamwork" from an entry title and added in "Christianity" from my link to "Christianity Today" in my "what I'm reading" list. Now there's a real good hit for you. Yet, this person wanting to know about Christianity and teamwork worked their way down to the 71st hit, which was a false hit and a blog AND FOLLOWED IT! Did they at least say, "Pshaw! What a waste!" after they arrived at my blog entry on the subject of teamwork?
Does anyone use MSN as a search engine by choice? Or are these people just typing "front porches" into the URL line and getting thrown into MSN as punishment for not knowing how browsers work. (They apparently don't know much about blogs either.)
There's this small temptation to write for the MSN search engine to drive up my hit count, throwing out enticing tidbits for the index. Just think what might happen if I actually used the word "syndrome" some day!
I did get one hit coming off an overseas version of yahoo one day. It linked to the front page of my blog rather than the actual post that drew the hit and there was no easy way to find the entry. That might be even worse than MSN.
:fav17
Marsha