Weird visitations

[Mike Lewis]

This is really weird. Consider these facts:

- I run a hobby web site, at

http://www.veg-world.com.

The most popular page on the site is my recipe for carrot cake.

- This recipe has been my most visited page -- by a wide margin -- for ten of the last 12 months. It frequently gets more visitors than any other two pages put together. Everyone loves my carrot cake.

- Aound 80 - 85 percent of all my visitors come via Google.

- If you do a Google search for "carrot cake", "recipe for carrot cake" or anything similar, my page is never in the top 40. There are a heck of a lot of good carrot cake recipes out there, and many of them rank above mine.

So how are all those cake-loving visitors finding my page (and my version doesn't even have cream cheese frosting)?

Please understand -- this is not a problem. I'm happy with the situation. It's just that I am really curious to know how I manage to achieve such good traffic.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[ChrisHirst]

check your logs, it will tell you the exact phrase used in the referer and the page of the SERPs it was found on.



Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Chris,

OK .... the exact phrases are always "carrot cake" and "carrot cake recipe" -- those are the ones I have tested in Google. So that doesn't get me any further forward.

As for the referrer ... I'm not sure if my log tells me that. In fact, it doesn't show any search engines. Maybe that's a limitation of the log viewer program I am using. I don't know how to access the raw log files.

Thanks for your reply.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[Mike Lewis]

Just to add to my last post ....

My log viewer shows "Links from an Internet Search Engine", in which Google shows up as 2,050 referrals, out of approx. 2,300 this month.

It then shows "Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines)", which lists some sites I recognise and others I don't. Some of these might be search engines that the viewer program doesn't know about, but even all of these put together only account for about 200 visitors this month.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[ChrisHunt]

It may not tell you much that your logs don't, but try signing up at

http://www.statcounter.com

. It'll let you track visitors' paths through your site.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thanks for that, Chris. I'll give it a try.

By the way, I don't want any of you to spend too much time on this. As I said, it's not really a problem. I'd just like to satisfy my curiosity.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[ChrisHirst]

What you may find, and I guess what your stats program doesn't show is that the hits may be coming from regional engines, Google.be, .de, .il etc. I get a lot of referers from regionals that don't show up on Google.com

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Chris,

your stats program doesn't show is that the hits may be coming from regional engines, Google.be, .de,

I never thought of that. The viewer program just shows Google. I could test it by visiting those engines myself and typing in the search term (although it's more likely to be English-language engines, in this case; perhaps I'll try .au and the like).

Thanks.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[Mike Lewis]

Chris,

Just to follow up ....

I checked the regional engines, and was surprised at the vast differences in ranking. It never occurred to me to use a regional engine myself -- after all, why limit a search to a paricular country, when you can have the whole world? But, clearly, some folk do.

Then I read the article by Ian McAnerin that you recommended in thread828-1093884. This raises all kinds of interesting questions. I'm surprised people aren't more aware of these issues.

By the way, it's curious that Google doesn't have a regional or national engine for the USA, which is surely the biggest market of all.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[ChrisHunt]

Americans don't consider the US to be a region, they think of it as the whole world. Regional/national engines are for other countries.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[Mike Lewis]

Chris,

Yes, that sounds plausible.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My sites:
Visual FoxPro (www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk)
Crystal Reports (www.ml-crystal.com)

 

[Foamcow]

I wonder if google.com gives more weighting to American sites then?

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Target Marketing Communications - Advertising, Direct Marketing and Public Relations
I wonder what possesses people to make those animated gifs. Do you just get up in the morning and think, "You know what web design r