I don't get a huge amount of traffic. It's tragic, I know, but it's true. It's also not entirely unexpected; I write mainly to amuse myself, and because I enjoy writing. Since I have no particular theme - aside from, y'know, "This Is What Wandered Into My Brain" - and since I tend to put entries up without a great deal of proofreading or revision, I don't really expect to attract a huge and devoted following. Quite the opposite, in fact: I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of people who do read, and sometimes comment.
So I'm always interested in what brings people here, especially the folks who presumably aren't regular readers. Most of the time it's nothing special - I get a small but steady number of hits related to people searching for information on the Carmelite Hotel phishing scam, for example. Other hits are quirkier, but not especially surprising given the sorts of things I write about: people have landed on the blog while doing searches for "holiday horror movies", say, or "dreams about alien invasion". Variations on the theme of "creepy metaphors" show up regularly.
And, of course, I get the occasional hit from someone looking for information on the process of deconversion, or evangelizing to unbelievers, or things like that. Which is fine; the Blog o' Doom isn't an in-depth resource for such things, but I think that the information I do have is worthwhile.
Every once in a while, though, I get hits from some search terms that would never have occurred to me. In the past week, for example, I've had someone search for "Gofulu Cthulhu" - apparently it's a popular misspelling? - and, on a related note, "why do people spell cthulhu different".
This is funny to me. (The answer, by the way, is that "Cthulhu" is an approximate phonetic rendering of a name which was never meant to be pronounced by human speech organs. So if the person who was doing that search stops back by, well... now you know.)
Those weren't the best ones, though. The best searches were the ones that, well, put it this way: not only would I not have expected anyone to find my blog this way, I wouldn't have expected anyone to ever search for this. There are two of those from the last week's logs:
1. how to explain the zombie apocalypse to parents
2. how to tell if your velociraptor is having pre marital sex
I just... thought I'd share that.
I don't fully understand blog popularity; I don't know why themed blogs should necessarily be more potentially popular than variety blogs. (This could be why no one reads mine . . . )
ReplyDeleteLove the premartial velociraptor question. I think it's a good sign when your blog provokes such links.
how to tell if your velociraptor is having pre marital sex
ReplyDeleteThat is hilarious.
Anon: Pre-martial sex? Well, if you're into that sort of thing.
(The Firefox spellchecker does not have "velociraptor". This must be fixed.)
That is beautiful. (I kind of want to write a short story about the velociraptor and the pre-marital sex now. It can have been created in a lab, a la Jurassic Park, by someone whose distinctionsbetween hir velociraptor child and a human child of the same age are increasingly blurred, for reasons I haven't thought of yet.)
ReplyDeleteI'm sending my sister the Cell Phone Bible installments as they come out. She thinks it's an interesting story.
@ Anonymous - I'm not sure it's a matter of themed vs. un-themed, it's just that certain themes do tend to attract an audience in a way that others just don't do.
ReplyDelete@ Emily - thanks for passing those along. I have at least two more installments, at which point I should have the thing finished. Meanwhile, more pre-marital velociraptor goodness is on the way. After all, if someone asked the question, then clearly there needs to be a definitive answer...