Sunday 4 May 2008

Analytics and searching

Earlier this year I read a post by a fellow blogger which discussed Google Analytics. Although I was already using several applications to track visitors to my blog this seemed to have even more statistics for the inner geek.

Not only can you find out where you visitors come from (roughly) you can also find out what brought them to your site in the first place.

I am particularly fascinated to see the search engine strings that have brought people to my various posts. Until a recent Virgin Media debacle which has seen "code 1-90203" become the favourite search term it was "Horst Buckholst" which brought most people to my site. This is strange as I mention him only once in passing yet if you type "Horst Buckholst" into Google my blog is the number one search result. Reason for this? Incorrect spelling of the actor's name (oops!). If you have landed here seeking information on Horst Buchholz I would direct you to IMDb now armed with the correct spelling! Incidentally, we never really got to the bottom of the VM "code 1-90203", it was suggested on several forums that normality may resume at the end of this week once the fable billing upgrade has been accomplished. My email (touch wood) has been working perfectly ever since, although I've not tried the webmail recently.