Interesting: blogs are creating so much noise on the net that search engines are being overwhelmed by them. See Wired:
With no deliberate effort, many dedicated weblog publishers are finding their blogs rank high on search results for topics that, oftentimes, they claim to know practically nothing about.
Bloggers attribute prominent placement to the frequency with which they publish new material and the fact that other sites often link to their blogs. These are two factors most search engines take into account when determining rankings.
“More and more, I’m running into myself on Google,” said Russ Beattie, who publishes a blog from his Madrid home.
Other Web surfers are also being directed to Beattie’s blog. In a 24-hour period this week, Beattie said he got more than 150 click-throughs from Google users, including searches on such keywords as “Kim Possible” (a Disney cartoon), “Screen Flipper,” “Lotus 1,2,3 menu structure for cars,” and “birthday card special agent.”
Last month, I deleted a tiny little side blog I had created that listed guys I thought were cute. It wasn’t listed anywhere except one tiny link on my main blog, but for some reason, Google grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go, generating a complaint from one of the people who appeared on it. It seemed that he was about to appear in a new television series and when people searched for him on Google, the first result was my insignificant, useless blog!
Judging from the content of this blog, Google may think that I am an expert on Dubya, television clutter, Futurama, and heart break. There must be some way to make a buck from that, right?
[Query: Does anyone know how I can find out what searches are bringing people to my site? Is it something I can find out from Google, or do I need some kind of referral and site stat software?]
Gene,
The information about the searches that bring people to your site is in the referrer log (sometimes a separate log file; often just part of the general log). Each entry from a search engine referral includes the search parameters used.
Almost /all/ of the Google searches that bring people to my blog are for “stephen lynch lyrics” or specific Stephen Lynch songs–already this month there have been several hundred referrals from Google for people looking for lyrics to his songs (which I don’t allow to be posted there, after asking him how he felt about that). My first posting about him more than a year ago has something like 60 comments, and still seems to generate several comments a month.
“Nightcrawler enochian” appears several times and “naked wolverine” once, so my comments about the new X-Men movie seems to have brought a few people from Google as well.
I have no idea, though, how “Mexican Recent History” managed to bring someone to my site.
i was just searching for stephen lynch lyrics and i found this, so quit talking about it if you aren’t gonna help!!!
no one has stephen lynch lyrics. he’s very protective of his material.
hahaha… yeah, i stumbled here bass ackwards from a google search, but i don’t remember what it was for. definitely not stephen lynch lyrics. however, i was soon sucked into gene’s world of, as he says, “Dubya, television clutter, Futurama, and heart break.”
so, in my opinion, HOORAY FOR GOOGLE!! i’m glad it spat me onto your little corner of cyberspace.
😀