i use google analytics to get aggregated info about the people who come to my site.

aggregated means that i’m not gathering personal info about you, just to clarify. i could care less about you, really. it’s just an interesting snapshot of where site visitors come from, how long they spend when they get here, the pages they like to visit, and so forth.

here are some fun facts about my traffic:

» by far, the most search engine traffic comes from people looking for info about kristen hall. there’s not a lot of kristen hall info here, other than my voluminous mad ravings about how wonderful she is. but if you googled “kristen hall”, odds are you already know that. still, i guess people hopefully click through and, if nothing else, get some affirmation of their opinion. a lot of the visitors spell it wrong, as “kristin hall”, just like i used to.

» i get a good share of hits from people searching for “celeriac disease”. the term is “celiac disease”, but i jokingly referred to it as “celeriac disease”. so i get a bunch of traffic from people who can’t spell, or alternately from a tiny subset of the world population allergic to an obscure root vegetable.

» 15% of my new visits come from an semi-obscure portal page at home.bellsouth.net — i’ve searched the site trying to figure out why to no avail. there must be some reference to this site somewhere, because the hits keep on coming and have been for several years. but i’ll be damned if i know why.

» the other weird post that’s rocketed to the top of google results is my post about benjamin moore paint. i listed the part numbers for the shades of paint that we bought, mostly so when i repainted i’d know what went where. still, that level of specificity seems to attract people looking for information about aura paint. hope i helped, paint lovers.

» the rings and the tattoos are still very popular items as well. amazing to me that people still are such hedwig fanatics, all these years on.

» i get traffic from five continents. i learned in school that there were seven continents (north america, south america, europe, asia, africa, australia, antarctica) but at some point either the rules changed, or google just decided to remap the continents. as powerful as they are, it wouldn’t surprise me. according to google, from what i can tell there are six continents, and i get traffic from five (americas, europe, asia, oceania, africa). maybe there are 5 continents, and they are lumping antarctica in with oceania. who the hell knows. next you’ll be telling me that there are only eight planets. i don’t like that south america is evidently no longer its own continent — zim should rightfully be upset.

» the daily search term list (which of course changes daily) is a nonstop evolution of amusement. here are a few search terms through which people found my site within the last couple of days:

— Lawnmower killed cat (never did such a thing!)
— “standing on cold concrete” (definitely did that!)
— why does my cat poop outside of the litt (i’m assuming they meant litter box and got tired of typing)
— liza minnelli gay fans (finally, some accuracy!)

anyway, the fun never stops. get a blog, and do some aggregate tracking. you’ll be glad you did.