Here at SB, we use Google analytics for getting info about how many people are reading our blogs, and how they get here. I also have a SiteMeter monitor on GM\/BM. One thing that I get a kick out of is taking a look at my hits, and seeing what kinds of interesting connections come up. Sometimes it’s funny; sometimes it’s informative, sometimes it’s just depressing.
\nSo last night, I was unwinding after putting my kids to bed, and was taking a look. The interesting\/amusing connections I found:
\n1. The number one search term leading people to Good Math, Bad Math? “pharyngula”. PZ, I hate you! (And yes, I’m deliberately not linking. \ud83d\ude42 )
\n2. The number one persons name in searches that lead people to GM\/BM? “Ken Ham”. Now *that* is depressing. Ken Ham, who I’ve never written about, directs more hits to my blog than my own name.
\n3. The strangest search term that led readers here: “butt propeller”. And not just once; three separate visits on three separate days got here via searches for “butt propeller”. I’m really not sure what to make of this one. Probably related to my post on Swinburne where I talked about monkeys flying out of my butt as a metaphor.
\n4. An interesting connection: I posted something yesterday about a [really bad probability argument][bad-prob] for Christianity. I got the link through email from a reader. It turns out that it’s on a fairly obscure site that [Orac][orac] had linked to in a friday post about Holocaust denial. The reader who sent me the link is definitely one of Orac’s readers as well; so the nasty probability argument was discovered through an unrelated subject on scienceblogs. I like the SB networking aspect of that; on the other hand, I wish I’d looked at the site hosting the wretched argument that I mocked; I’d rather not have given a bunch of asshole holocaust deniers the publicity.
\n5. Back on GM\/BMs [old home][gmbm-blogger] on blogger, I did a couple of posts about a crackpot named Gary Osborne. Gary came to the blog to “defend” himself. (His idea of defending himself is call other people names, and then complain that their criticisms of him are ad hominems.) An interesting thing that I noticed was that every time he posted on the blog, I’d see referrals from a rather obscure british search engine with Gary’s name as the search keyword. After he stopped responding, the hits from that engine went away. Suddenly, I’m seeing a bunch of referrals from that engine, and I discovered that Gary has, once again, posted a [web-page][osborne-declares-victory] on a site without comments discussing his wonderful victory over me, and various GM\/BM readers who joined the original discussion. Gotta love people who run away from debates and declare victory, eh?
\n6. Most disturbing search terms that found my blog?: “juniper lee cartoon porn”. I have no idea who Juniper Lee is. Frankly, I’m too scared to do the search and find out.
\n7. Unexpected linkages: 65 page views referred from [animalcules][animalcules]. Since I’ve never submitted any of my posts to that, and I didn’t know of anyone linking to me in articles in animalcules, I was surprised (in a good way) by that.
\n8. Another very surprising one: a search for “daily show” and “kurt vonnegut” led people to GM\/BM twice.
\n9. A couple of frequent commenters here are frequent trollers on Panda’s Thumb. Since I frequently don’t pay a lot of attention to the names of commenters on other blogs, unless I get into a discussion with them, I hadn’t noticed the connection.
\n10. Three different people set up blogs specifically to respond to something I posted. Each has exactly one post.
\n[bad-prob]: http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/goodmath\/2006\/06\/fundie_probability_even_worse.php
\n[orac]: http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/2006\/06\/who_perpetrated_the_holohoax.php
\n[gmbm-blogger]: http:\/\/goodmath.blogspot.com
\n[osborne-declares-victory]: http:\/\/www.gardinersworld.com\/content\/view\/72\/45\/
\n[animalcules]: http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/aetiology\/2006\/02\/announcing_new_blog_carnival_1.php<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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