As you know, I have three blogs. You probably don’t know that I have more than three. But trust me, you’re not likely to be interested in the others. You may not even be interested in the three that I have. But anyway, as you know, I have three blogs.

One of the things I enjoy about the blogs is looking at the traffic statistics. Traffic statistics give me all sorts of information about everyone who visits my blogs. I use a web site called StatCounter to track my traffic. I just stick a piece of code into the templates for my blogs, and StatCounter does all the work for me. Among the information I get, they tell me how many people visit my page every day, which ones are returning visitors, and their geographic locations.

For example, as I write this, of the past 100 visitors to Anarchestra, there were 74 from the U.S., 4 each from Malaysia, Australia, and France, 3 from Israel, 2 each from the U.K. and Germany, and 1 each from the Netherlands, Mexico, Lithuania, Hong Kong, India, Spain and Japan. Of the 74 U.S. visitors, 48 were from California, 7 were from Nebraska, 6 from Colorado, with several other states also represented.

I can break it down further: of the 7 Nebraska visitors, 4 were from Lincoln, with 1 each from Omaha, Grand Island, and Henderson. I can even see the individual ISPs of each visitor.

The availability of this type of information has revolutionized the way businesses operate and transformed the marketing and advertising industries. What was once very much a guessing game has evolved into a near-science – at least when it comes to observing people’s Internet purchasing behavior. An Internet business can track the number of times every one of their web page buttons, images, and sale items gets clicked on, and by whom. And they do.

Every single Internet business in the world is collecting this type of data about every single one of its customers every day (including you), gauging customer behavior, how customers respond to different sales tactics, and basically figuring out – through trial and error, but with incredible amounts of data to guide them – how to get you to give them your money.

But that’s not what I want to write about today. Today, I want to write about my favorite of all the statistics I get – and that’s the "came from" info, specifically the search strings that led people to my blogs.

You see, in addition to all the other great information I get that tells me all about you, my dear visitors, I get to see the page that you came from, if that page contained a referring link to my blog. By and large, most such pages are from people using search engines such as Google, who saw one of my blogs come up in their search results, and were intrigued enough to click through and see what the blog is all about. I can click back to those search pages, see the actual search string, and where my blog (or blog entry) appeared in the list of search results.

For example, if you use MSN’s search engine to search for “Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,” the second item in the list of search results is Kraigg’s MindScrapes post titled Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be pandering mutant amputee cowboys.

It's pretty funny to see the things people are searching for that lead them into one of my blogs. At least, I think it is. So, here’s a list of the three blogs, and the actual search strings that brought random visitors to Parallaxis, MindScrapes, and Anarchestra in the past few weeks.

Parallaxis received random visitors who were searching for the following:

Pictures of the Nebraska 2005 Blizzard
Pursuit of Happyness Chris Gardner
Blizzard Etymology
Star Trek Convention Lincoln Nebraska
Harriet’s Danish Dannebrog Nebraska
Shadowland Haunted Places Index
Fast way from Nebraska to San Francisco

MindScrapes received random visitors who were searching for the following:

Karmel Korn

(Oddly enough, the most popular search by far. I’m amazed at the number of people searching for “Karmel Korn.” Although, I’m not surprised these people are clicking through to read my post titled Karmel Korn’s New Product Line – I’m sure they’re all very excited to learn about Karmel Korn’s new offerings. Imagine their disappointment when they figure out it was only a dream I had, and that they won’t actually be able to buy caramel-coated oranges, or cinammon-applesauce-dipped potatoes the next time they go to the mall. Sorry folks!)

Tim Conway (People seem very interested in knowing how Tim Conway Tried To Steal My Man)
Dorf Tim Coway
Gary Busey
Mind Trips
VW Thing
Gassing Rats
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
Coco Puffs Cereal
Types of Captain Crunch
Scrapes Hunting (What is Scrapes Hunting? Anyone?)
Skate Queen

Anarchestra received random visitors who were searching for the following:

Photos Folsom Street Fair
4Wheeler Games
Tannery in Morocco
Anarchestra (Yes, someone actually was searching the word “Anarchestra!”)
Claudine Longet Noting (sic) to lose
Buca di Beppo MySpace
Sunshine Buddy Dancing

(Searching for “Sunshine Buddy Dancing” on Yahoo brings up Anarchestra as the FIRST TWO search results. I’m so proud!)

Sunshine Buddies
Deepdick Collective (This is a rap group, if you’re wondering)
Roni Skins (I was puzzled by this one, but then remembered that I recently wrote an entry about someone making Rice-a-Roni…)

That's it.

Well, I think it's interesting...