Thursday, October 13, 2011

i Google

I don't check my website stats very often, but when I do, it's always sort of interesting. Take, for example, the number of hits I get. In June, I got almost 20,000 hits, which makes sense because INK FLAMINGOS came out that month and my website was tacked onto reviews and whatnot. But what's really surprising is that there were 16,000 hits in September. Really? When I have done next to nothing promotion-wise. I even forgot to post that I was in St. Louis at Bouchercon.

But what's really fun to look at in the website stats are the search strings, or words that people put into search engines and end up finding my website. These have been among the search strings listed on my site:

clumps lipstick

Really? It makes me want to go into Google and see what I come up with when I type this in.

german mystery writer olsen

Well, I'm Swedish and Norwegian, and those are Germanic languages so maybe this one makes slightly more sense. Although I hate it when people spell my name wrong.

guilford ct tennis karen

I grew up in Madison, Connecticut, which is the next town over to Guilford. I played tennis about five years ago but haven't played much since. Karen is my first name. So maybe, with all these things strung together, it sort of makes sense.

driven to ink by karen e olson can be found in library

Yes, absolutely, Driven to Ink can be found in libraries. But the person who searched with this clearly wasn't quite sure just which library, just wanted to know if the book was in the library.

I know I've typed odd things into Google, looking for things I'm not quite sure about. We had funny white/greenish scaly stuff on the pipe that came out of the wall for the shower head. I wanted to clean it, but didn't know what it was. So I put white/greenish scaly stuff on pipe into Google and ended up finding out that I could use white distilled vinegar for almost anything. A good scrub with a Dobie soaked in white vinegar did the trick. I also got a great recipe for making homemade Windex with vinegar, water, and a little dishwashing soap, which works great.

Considering that Google and the Internets is still so relatively new, I still can't imagine how I lived without it for most of my life.

What was the last thing you Googled successfully

2 comments:

K.C. Shaw said...

I had a tune in my head that I couldn't identify, and only a few words of the lyrics to go on. I googled the words I could remember +lyrics, and identified the song. That was a few months ago so I've now (predictably) forgotten both the song and the tune, but it was a nice triumph at the time.

I sometimes forget how hard it was to research stuff before the internet.

AnnaMartin said...

I Googled "Why does my cat" and the search field automatically filled with several hilarious options, like "stick its butt in my face." That's one of my favorite Google stories.