Google Analytics: Searches that Led Here

I visited Google Analytics, and went through the search results that led people to my blog in 2012. It’s fascinating reading. Some people found what they were searching for. Others, I suspect didn't.

• “Cognatus Ergo Sum” (10 people) 

I thought I had a unique idea when I created that Latin phrase for a poem I wrote. Apparently it has been used often to describe an African emphasis on community.

• “lessons from splitting the red sea for bar mitzvah” (3 people) 

I’m pleased if the transcription of my Bar Mitzvah speech helped any kid with theirs (hopefully they took ideas, and didn't just 'borrow' the entire speech) – however, I am slightly concerned since all three searches were exactly one week prior to this year’s reading of that passage. I am hopeful they were researching a year in advance, and not a week in advance.

• "married her grandson” (2 people)

I bet they were as shocked as I was to discover this fact about Lucille Ball. But Ancestry’s OneWorldTree confirms it.

• “tree” (2 people) 

I wonder how many pages of search results they had to go through before they found my blog? 

ProTip: be a little more specific in your searches. [Maybe this was an 'image search.']

• “since no one has ever heard of my grandparents surname please tell me how the last four letters of their name is prounounced in hungarian – kats” (1 person)

Perhaps not that specific.

• "1900 Cluj Porno" (1 person)
• "Cluj 1900 Porno" (1 person)

I am unsure why a link shows up to this blog post for these two searches. The entry only contains two of those three words. I can only imagine whoever performed those searches was disappointed by my transcription.

• “Frases de Sid Wyman” (1 person)

Sid Wyman was a cousin of mine, however, it appears someone was searching for some quotes from him, in Spanish. I don't know if he knew Spanish. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He spent much of his adult life in Las Vegas.

• “Hot amanuensis” (1 person)

An intriguing combination of adjective and noun. I'd expect to see it either on a restaurant menu ("I"ll have a hot stack of amanuensis, covered in syrup, please?") or a single's page (SWF seeking Hot Amanuensis to transcribe her dreams and fantasies. Must know cursive.)

• “Is sir name Cruvant French” (1 person)

The surname, “Cruvant,” is Lithuanian. It comes from the town, Kruvandai.

 [I hope this was a young cousin of mine, for whom I can overlook the spelling error.]

• "What color is a black swan?" (1 person)

Black.

• “Where was my family from?” (1 person)

I wish it were that easy.

Themeless Thursday: Random Jots

1) Analytics

Here's a graphic illustrating the number of visits this blog has received from July of 2009 through May of 2010. Sure, I could have waited a month to do this. But I also knew my mind was going to be elsewhere in a month. I started using Google Analytics 11 months ago. I like the information it provides me. Some of you may notice I cut off the Y-axis. Without the Y-axis I realize no one else will be able to compare their number of visits to mine. But I do find my temporary increase in visitors during the month of October 2009, as well as a more lasting increase after January 1 and April 1 of 2010 to be interesting, at least to me.

The top five most popular pages in the past 11 months (except for the main page):

1) Poetry: Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed
2) St. Louis Snow Event of 1982
3) Poetry: Copy-Change - Where I'm From - George Ella Lyon
4) St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries
5) St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries - and other area newspapers

The popularity of those two poems I posted in August and September of 2009 is what drove the increase in visits in October 2009. They were part of a "Poetry Friday" series I stopped in November. I'm glad the other three pages are historical/genealogical in nature.

I highly recommend Google Analytics for anyone interested in tracking how many people are visiting their blog/website, and why.

2) The TITLE attribute

Moultrie Creek Gazette has an HTML-centric post on how to use the TITLE attribute with the ACRONYM and ABBR tags. Some bloggers and website designers may be interested. I don't use the ACRONYM and ABBR tags much myself, as I like to define meanings parenthetically (like this). However, I use the TITLE attribute a lot. With the IMG tag.

In this code

<img src="filename.jpg" title="Mouseover text">

The TITLE attribute provides the text that appears when you move your mouse to bring the 'cursor' arrow over an image. Move the mouse over any image in this post to see what it looks like.

It's good to use the TITLE tag with images, as many screenreaders used by the blind will read the text, so the blind user will at least know what appears in the image.

UPDATE:  I received an email from someone having difficulty with this, and I realized that Blogger (and likely other software,too) creates some code for images that might look more confusing than the code I put above.   Here is the code for the photo below:

<img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiaTQaIvDA56lOO16B4cF3dZJCpcq_4XZx1ACS99BpFaWb1kphaNkj2JjTn8hj05C9PrqwqNjPmGAqL7visgy54X7VsQWJULnO3MUNqhD0iT2mvJbNUGFguF0h36PS3Bs6OhqGPrRV/s400/TurdaCanyon.jpg" title="A breathtaking image of Turda Canyon nearby Turda, Romania." width="300" />

The most important thing to remember is not to add any brackets, as I don't believe the order of the attributes matter.  As long as each attribute follows the AttributeName="AttibuteValue" format.  I tend to put the Title Attribute at or near the end of the list.

3) Another photo of Turda

Turda, Hungary (now Romania) is where my great great grandfather, Abraham Deutsch, lived. (I posted another photo I found of the area yesterday)

Turda Canyon (Photograph by CameliaTWU)

The idea for the title of this post came from GMSV (Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Google Analytics

A month ago, I signed up for Google Analytics to measure who was visiting this blog, and how they were getting here. I had been using SiteMeter, but I wasn't happy with the limited information the free version was giving me.

Now that I have a month of statistics, I thought I would share some of them:

In the past 30 days I had 992 visits - approximately 33 visits a day on average.

Top 10 countries:
US (713)
Canada (62)
United Kingdom (34)
Belgium (26)
Netherlands (18)
Australia (14)
Brazil (10)
Philippines (10)
Mexico (7)
Germany (7)

Top 5 searches that led to the site
"Missouri Genealogy" Genealogywise (20)
Deuteronomy 16 (9)
St. Louis Post Dispatch Obituaries (7)
Dutch Terms of Endearment (6)
German Terms of Endearment (5)

Top 10 pages viewed
1. Main page (446)
2. label/Wordless Wednesday (75)
3. st-louis-post-dispatch-obituaries.html (54)
4. genealogy-wise-and-its-most-active-and_7337.html (52)
5. thoughts-on-genealogywise.html (42)
6. smile-for-camera-they-worked-hard-for.html (37)
7. label/Amanuensis Monday (33)
8. dont-rely-completely-on-google-alerts.html (31)
9. missouri-digital-heritage.html (30)
10. my-surnames.html (27)

I'm not too surprised by most of this information. I expect the majority of my regular readers to be visiting the main page to read the latest entries. The other pages will be accessed by those who find my site via search engines, are referred from other sites, or those who decide to browse through the archives.

This is proof (to me) that when one does participate in the Wordless Wednesday meme, one should add a link at WordlessWednesday.com. It does bring in new visitors.

I'd be happy with an average of 30 readers a day, but I know it's higher. Google Analytics only measures those who visit the website. There are several other ways to read my posts. The most common is through an RSS feedreader. There are currently 79 subscribers via Google Reader, and 3 through Bloglines. (I've subtracted my own subscriptions from these totals) Most of these readers likely only visit the site when they leave a comment. There are other feedreaders, but these are the only two for which I have access to the statistics.

I also send a copy of my feed to my Facebook Notes application, and my profile page on Genealogy Wise. There is no way for me to know how many people read my posts there, though I have received several comments on my posts on Facebook, so I know I have some friends reading it there. I may have over 100 regular readers. I find this amazing, and gratifying. I want to thank all of you, and hopefully my posts continue to be of interest.