I have both AWStats and Google Analytics monitoring the traffic on my site. I'm a little obsessive-compulsive about checking them both. It's a serious, diagnosed disorder that affects thousands of web developers worldwide. I might as well turn my crippling disorder into a blog post, so I thought I'd share some interesting stat-related findings I've noticed. Parental Advisory: The term "free live porno" is used in this post.
The first thing I go for when I open up my site stats is the keyword results. It feels a tad weird to know what people are searching the internet for. It's twice as weird when you find that someone's weird Google searches turned up a page on your site. Here are some gems from the last month.
• i eat 33000 calories a day
• chinese women flushes her baby down the toilet
• killa city
• tube nightclub portland
• rootlike skin condition
• toilet
I'm guessing that most of these hits go to pages on the message board that I host for some college friends of mine. We talk about some crazy crap there, like Chinese baby flushing, root-like skin conditions and the merits of various toilets. As I'm typing all this out, something just occurred to me. Since I now have all these keywords on one page, am I just reinforcing my search relevance for these terms? That would be hilarious.
Hey Google! Index this page for these terms as well, ok? Carrot, dishwasher, taco gloves, beef noodle catastrophe, Britney Spears. Ok, thanks! Moving on…
The second thing I check is the referring site stats. I like to know who's linking to my site. It makes me feel loved and valued and generally warm inside. There are also some odd ducks in this category as well. The oddest might be freeliveporno.org. Dot ORG? Really? Ok, sure. I got four hits from that site and I can't tell why. First off, it's great that someone created a non-profit organization to provide free live porno to the public. But how did they show up in my referrer logs? My theory is that four people on the internet were on that site at random times and while they were perusing the free live porno offerings, they suddenly wanted to check out my portfolio. It could happen. The internet is a crazy place.
The most traffic on my server these days is all related to the little widget and screen saver I did for NBC's The Office. No, NBC didn't hire me to do this, I was just bored one Friday. Never underestimate the value of capturing a funny TV moment and recreating it in web form. I've been searching for something new I can create that might 'go viral' but free time and creativity have been hard to come by lately. Go figure.
So there you have it, a peek inside my stat obsession. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.