Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Curiouser and curiouser

Sitemeter touts itself as a way of seeing how "customers" get to sites and what interests them. Bull. I'll bet the majority--of free users, at least--just use Sitemeter or similar services out of morbid curiosity and vanity. How many people visit this thing? How long do they stay? What blog posts are popular?

And the burning question: How the hell are they finding my blog? The answers can be quite revealing.

Take this one, which just left me scratching my head:

But that's nothing in comparison to this one:

I try to understand the trends. For a spell, I had a bunch of hits from Delhi about being overeducated for a job. Several visitors recently came in search of the Tim O'Brien "How to Tell a True War Story" excerpt I posted for Veteran's Day. It's a trend. It fits.

But "catharsis in my arse" baffles me. Firstly, if one were in search of catharsis, said orifice would probably not be the best place to start looking. And if someone were googling said search string with the conviction that said person had said catharsis lodged in aforementioned orifice, well, frankly, I'd recommend googling proctologists instead.

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