Okay, I admit it. I look sometimes.
That’s right. I will – on occasion — click over to my “site stats” page to see how many views a certain post might have received. Is that really so bad? Do I need to change my name to BlogVanity? I hope not.
Anyway, I like to think that this place gets pretty good traffic. And over the last or so year my numbers have been up. And I mean up. What happened? Have the masses finally become keen on book reviews and cocktail recipes from scientists?
Well, I don’t want to sound like a GOP pollster, but I’m afraid my numbers are skewed. By what, you might wonder? Well, by Scrat.
Yep – and it’s pretty obvious from looking at the data that my post from last fall about the discovery of fossils of what might be referred to as “a sabre-toothed squirrel” is the culprit. You see, in that post I included a picture of the cartoon sabre-toothed squirrel, Scrat, from the Ice Age movies. And apparently, that picture is pretty high on the list of google image search results for “Scrat”.
Let’s take Wednesday – I’d just finished BlogFestivus, but is what is the top hit on my blog? Yep, Scrat.
Page hits
What about search terms that lead to here. As you can see, the top ten are pretty Scratcentric. Which, as a blogger, I can say is a little disappointing.
Search for me!
That post is far and away the top page-view getter over the last 12 months — garnering about 50% more than the home page. In fact, if you look at the all time total since I moved this blog to WordPress from Vox, a staggering 18% are now made up of Scrat hits. And my guess is that percentage will always get larger.
Will be overtaken shortly
So, what’s a blogger to do? Should I not worry about it and take my scrat-tastic numbers with a lump of salt? Should I delete that post so that traffic should go back to being representative of, you know, the content that I generate?
Scrat
I don’t know. I do sort of like that squirrel, so maybe it’s not the worst of situations. Happy Scraturday to all!
Stevil 
I see what you did here. 200 hits – 112 going to Scrat wasn’t enough. You had to write a 2nd post to see if you could top those numbers. Yep. You’ll spend the Christmas holiday checking your stats, wondering if you’ll break the record. Pretty sneaky, Steve.
It’s a vicious cycle, LD. Though if you wouldn’t mind, check back from time-to-time to see if there are more responses to your comment… :)
I was going to say the same thing.
(And he doesn’t want to be compared to a GOP pollster …)
Lol. I have never looked at my scrats…er, I mean stats. Ignorance is bliss!
Scrat is pretty darn cute, though.
Scrat is EASILY the best part of the Ice Age movies, so really, that’s not bad, right?
I have a list of ba-ba songs on my site. I would estimate that about 85% of my hits are from people searching for stuff like:
“song that goes ba ba bah ba ba ba”
“what’s the advert goes ba ba”
“ba baaa ba club song”
It’s kind of depressing when you consider that my recent posts get a couple dozen hits tops. I try not to care.
M—-I: I try not to care. Maybe that’s why I won’t look again. Until after Christmas.
Manky toes – thats what people come searching for with me – and I do have the cure.
Manky toes? Wow. I have no idea what that means. :)
It ain’t pretty.
I don’t think I want to know what manky toes are — though I’m pretty sure I don’t want them… :D
Darn it, Steve, I tell myself I don’t care about stats, and then you go and make me all curious, so I checked….
My blog is supposedly blocked from Google searches, which is fine with me. But for reasons unexplained, I got over 1500 hits in February 2011. I haven’t topped that since, and I have no idea why February of last year was so popular. (Hopefully not for the wrong reasons.)
Maybe I need to post more cute cat photos. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Cat photos.
Now you are all making me curious. But, I’m not going to look just yet. It might make me start posting strange things…
1500 hits! Were you Fresh Pressed and didn’t know it? That would send the data-hound in me scurrying into the stats, I’m afraid.
I’m pretty sure that cute cat pics ALWAYS increase traffic… ;)
I have the same kind of head-scratcher with my post “If You Meet Carrie Fisher on the Road, Kill Her.” For the longest time she topped my charts (who knew so many people stalked Princess Leia). Then I got a tip from Kana at Kana’s Chronicles about adding Alternate Text to any images I posted (tags words), and suddenly my short stories were international best sellers–as far as hits went. All because folks were looking at the *pictures* I added to the text.
Here’s my take on the whole No-One’s-Really-Reading-Me dilemma: At least people are stopping by. Most will just slide by. But once in awhile, a reader will stop to look around. All we can do is make it easy for them to walk in (want some candy, little girl?). So keep up the Scat-work, buddy. And maybe a mastodon for good measure.
SS — hah! I wonder if there’s a lot of people out there searching for Carrie Fisher’s demise! I don’t really mind the Scrat stuff and am happy for the copious non-Scrat traffic! :)
This makes me laugh out loud and with manic hilarity! Who knew that being an international blogging phenomenon is based on world-wide interest in a prehistoric squirrel. Ain’t the world grand?
Now that you have another scrat post, your stats will go up even further. Joy to the world !
I would have stopped reading your blog a long time ago, had it not been for the scrat. ;-)
Really, the only people who visit my blog are looking to cheat on their English papers. Today’s top search term? “Synopsis for the Invisible Man.”
LOL! You just rained on my parade, Steve! I was wondering why certain posts of mine received more attention than others! Now I know!!
J — it’s a dash of cold water for sure! :)
Oh, and I forgot to mention…Since you’ve been Freshly Pressed, you have been most excellent about communicating with your followers! I’ve tried communicating with other bloggers who have 300+ followers and sometimes they aren’t so gracious in replying. I really like how you interact with your followers and visit their blogs, too! Thank you! :)
J — awww thanks!! :) It’s a funny thing about being FP’d that it gives you a chance to meet a LOT of other bloggers. With most of them, you won’t really connect, but a few stick and we’re all the richer for it! :)
Scrat is a better reason for a search then “boob cartoons”. Especially since my blog doesn’t contain any boob cartoons. Whatever those might be!
I think I have an idea of what boob cartoons are … ;) — can’t remember seeing those on your blog!
I’m a few weeks late on your post – what post was FP’d? I used to love looking for neighbours featured in the old Vox version.
On Vox I had thousands of hits for a blog post about something like, ‘100 top books of all time’. That skewed my stats for a long time – I finally hid the post, but since moving to WP, I don’t even bother looking at stats. I’m unpopular. I post seldom, and I’m okay with that. (sigh, I guess)
Cheers!
LG — you’re very popular in certain circles!! :)
I’ve had two posts FP’d: one was one where I took a picture every hour of a day (https://stevebetz.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/hour-by-hour/) and one was a cocktail this past year. :) (https://stevebetz.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/heres-to-summer-happy-hour-the-lonsdale/)
Aw… thanks!
You do have great photography (and mixologist) skills. I remember and loved the picture an hour thing! Would love to see you do another one – I might try that soon too. Thanks for the links!