Saturday, September 26, 2009

Tracking Stats

Okay, we all keep an eye on them, or most of us do anyway. It's fun to see where people come from and why they show up. It can also be fun to see what searches bring people to the blog.


I don't do these very much. The vast majority of my searches are pretty obvious. People search for "Yondalla." I always wonder how many are looking for me and how many are looking for the D&D goddess Andrew suggested when I needed a blog name. People search for foster care blogs, rules for foster families, parenting teenagers, adopting teenagers.

10% of my visitors arrive having done a search that landed them on my single most popular post: "How Much Do You Get Paid to Be a Foster Parent?" Those people rarely stick around though. They read that and then go off somewhere else. Many of them leave by the links I have on that post to places where they can get more information.

All that stays very consistent, so I don't normally blog about the results.

Today though I looked at the key word searches and there was something new. Someone came to the blog after searching:

"51 Signs you are getting older."

I think one of them may be that people are finding your blog by searching that phrase.




4 comments:

  1. Very...interesting. Did you post this before my email? Cuz I just saw this. LOL. Ironic...

    ReplyDelete
  2. No. It was your email that made me curious to look a little deeper in the report than I usually do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Could you please tell me where/how you track these things? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Go to Sitemeter.com and/or http://www.statcounter.com/
    also google analytics

    You will have to register, give them your blog address and then insert the code they give you into your blog. sitemeter and statcounter both give you a certain amount of information free and then offer you more for a price. I find between the three services I can find out everything I want to know.

    There is one called Tracksy that used to be my favorite, but they seemed to break down and lose my data, which is why my visitor count is from about one year after I started the blog.

    ReplyDelete

Comments will be open for a little while, then I will be shutting them off. The blog will stay, but I do not want either to moderate comments or leave the blog available to spammers.