A Peek Under the Hood
Google Analytics provides an interesting look as to how visitors reach a website. I’d like to give our B&B some examples of how others (those who do not subscribe to the RSS feed or those who’ve not bookmarked TTAC) come our way and you’ll find the reason near the end of this post.
Below is a selection of the most interesting “entrance keywords” in the hope of giving you an insight in to the psyche of the non-B&B. Consider this: TTAC receives orders of magnitude more visitors than we have registered users. And, of registered users, a relatively small percentage are active participants (guest writers and active commenters), a.k.a. the Best & Brightest.
Between now and the first of the year, people typed “thetruthaboutcars” (nearly 30,000 times) into Google Search. Are these people unclear on the concept? Sure, some of these people may be anti-bookmark—or have so many bookmarks (like me) that they’re useless—and type the name and let autocomplete autocomplete their request—but 30,000?
Moreover, more than 50,000 times people Google-searched “ttac”—same concept, folks, as ttac.com redirects here.
Now, this one . . . um, really?! Nearly 4,000 Google-searched “www.thetruthaboutcars.com”. I know none of our B&B do that. B&B, see how bright you really are?
Nearly 2,000 times the phrase “nissan versa defroster broken” brought us visitors. Good luck to whomever needs it, but I don’t think we can help. You may want to let Mr. Karesh know, though.
About 1,200 times the phrase “subaru poor man’s volvo” directed folks to us. The mind boggles.
Anyone care to guess how the phrase “pick-up, arkansas, froggers, fuses, and 22 cartridge” sent approximately 1,300 visitors here? Hint: you’ll know it if you believe in evolution.
If ever you have doubted the conundrum that is GM branding, a little over 1,000 searches of “what is a buick” directed visitors here.
Oh, now this is creepy: 666 searches of “suv flying vagina” brought us visitors. Farago’s got to be proud . . . .
Finally, it seems a famous (or is he infamous?) auto journalist and former TTAC contributor is revisiting his article (or maybe just the comments): 386 searches for “grosse pointe myopians” were made in the last month or so.
So, what does this have to do with anything? Back when we ran the survey on what terms we should use on TTAC, there were a few comments made to the effect that TTAC visitors are smart enough to figure out the various terms used by our esteemed writers. Now that you have the Analytics information that I have presented, do you think that’s true? Speaking of that survey . . . please see my next post.
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In haste, sometimes I'll accidentally punch in the URL to the Google Toolbar search window on my browser instead of the address line. That (entirely common mistake) could explain the Google redirects for the entire website name. But I have TTAC RSS-linked to my Google Reader... which BTW... would be a lot nicer if you wouldn't abbreviate the article until you click-through. But, I suppose ya gotta make a buck.
Here's another possible explanation for the popularity of "thetruthaboutcars" and "ttac": if you enter a domain name without .com in the Address box in Internet Explorer 5/6, it automatically appends the top-level domains (.com etc) until it hits a valid site. If you do the same thing in Firefox, it searches Google for the site and goes to the top result (like hitting the I Feel Lucky button). Maybe some people are used to that feature.