If They Search It, They Will Come

You bloggers out there, ever looked up who’s searching what—and ended up on your site? I get such a kick out of doing that every once in awhile. I use Sitemeter, and one of its handy-dandy stats is a listing of the past 100 visitors and from where they’ve been referred. Here’s the list of searches from the first 100 visitors of yesterday, and the posts their search led them to:

1. We’re sorry, but we were unable to complete your request

Oh, boy. Somebody else out there ready to strangle google. Or was it, perhaps, a google employee, just fresh off of climbing the google wall, all set and ready to fix my Scenes and Beans blog? For lo and behold—after that rant—it’s now fixed. (First new post up today.)


2. Inexplicably and without method

A quote from the movie Stranger Than Fiction. This searcher got my own version of how this works, when I was stuck in the middle of writing Crimson Eve.


3. Violet Dawn—google images

Hm. Some curious searcher (or was it my own editor or agent) typed in these words and was led right here to the main page, since Violet Dawn is shown on the sidebar.

Wait, I know! ’Tis a Hollywood bigwig, wanting to see the cover after hearing what a dynamite movie this book would make! My agent shall be calling me any day with the multi-million dollar offer.


4. Love and sex with robots

Okay. This is one sick puppy. (Imagine the surprise when this searcher landed on a Christian blog.)


5. Bubbled, writing

Forensics and Faith comes up third in this search. What in the heck do you suppose the searcher was looking for? What he/she got was my post that ran the draft beginning to Coral Moon, and my invitation for y'all's rewrite. The “writing” part turns up in the comments.


6. Emergent church

Well, that one didn’t take long. We talked about fiction for the “emergent church” or the GenX/Y crowd, just a couple days ago. (And by the way, I agree that the two groups shouldn’t be run together as the same thing.)


7. Rappers

You gotta be kidding! Somebody got on google images and searched for this—and what picture do you suppose turns up on page 8? You think the searcher used the photo somewhere? If so, for what?? Robin Lee Hatcher, I know you’re out there, reading this. Don’t kill me. Just revel in your new reputation.


8. Dentist finds deep cavity

Ah, me. Some poor soul who heard terrible news at the dentist wants to see what’s gonna happen next. He/she wants comfort, assurance everything’s gonna be OK. Instead this searcher gets to read about all my woes at the Big Bad Dentist. Part 1 of the sordid tale is linked above. Here are Part 2 (The Call) and Part 3 (I Survived). Survival’s in the drugs, I tell ya. Take all you can get.

9. Forensic + draw + scene

Okay, I can parse this one. This searcher, no doubt looking for forensics in the technical sense, got an introduction to Annie Kingston and my Hidden Faces series in this craft post on “Keeping the Tension” in suspense.


10. Broadman and Holman, editor, good, contract

Hm. Almost sounds like this searcher was looking for my recent post on editing, which included some kudos for Karen Ball, who’s just moved to B&H. You suppose Karen was doing some ego-googling?


So...you got any better ideas as to how the searchers used one of these topics? Or perhaps you’ve found a few strange searches on your own site lately …