Referrers, search engines, trends

Going through my site’s logfiles, I figured it’s about time for one of those navel-gazing site-analyzing posts. I’ve noticed some trends along the way, I think.

By far, the most search engine hits I get are from Google; over the past 30 days, I clocked 2,617 hits from Google, nearly four times more than Yahoo at 763 hits. In fact, the top ten search engines are:

I’m a little surprised by the amount of variation there.

The trends I’ve noticed are in the breakdown of what people are searching for from each site. Most of the Google searches are for free Palm ebooks, Matrix names, and variations on those themes; it seems that people are using Google to find specific types of information, knowing the parameters of what they’re looking for—targeted. The other search engines, on the other hand, seem to better reflect pop cultural references and more general searching. Among Yahoo searches, for instance, I see such phrases as, “boba fett” (number one), “kermit the frog,” “dell dude,” “a-team movie,” and so on. Same for the others.

So I’d guess that in Google searches, when they find me I’m near the top of the lists for what they’re searching for and the users are looking for specific things. On Yahoo and the others, though, it looks like people are more into browsing on vaguer searches, and clicking through on links that look interesting, but may not be relevant. The conclusion I’d draw from this (not surprisingly) is that Google users are power users, and the search engine people go to who want to really find something and get the job done, whereas Yahoo users are more casual, not so worried about the results, but they’ll do in a pinch.

And of course, the best part of this whole entry: listing some of the best/worst search phrases people have actually typed to get here. All verbatim.

• thongs in public
• what’s your name
• purple flowers
• jones green bean casserole soda
• van helsing absinthe
• donner party cannibalism
• heroin
• green bean soda
• white trash sex
• pong is a violent game
• twas the night bush
• green bean casserole soda
• ugliest picture
• topless rotten
• skinsuits
• donkey brew
• if you had a male tiger what would you name it
• snoop dog fir shizzle
• frog master
• fett ass
• cracker ingredients
• beer mugs carved in pumpkins
• what is the proper way to charge cell and cordless phones
• on the sierra nevada summerfest beer label what mountains are featured
• is there a formula for figuring out when thanksgiving day will be
• how do i clean vomit from couch
• check out my wife
• turkey soda
• where is it snowing in the united states november 11, 2004
• donner party beer
• emachine turns it’s self on
• halloween hooch drink