Saturday, January 05, 2008

How Did You Get Here

I ran across a post that made me laugh on the blog of a California professional photographer named Jeff Singer (no relation). I found his blog due to a search following a funny exchange with another non-relative named David Singer on Twitter.

Anyway, Jeff wrote about the variety of ways people stumble upon his blog via Google searches. For those who do not know, there is a variety of programs out there that allow you to catalogue traffic to your blog/websites that show you exactly what sight sent the viewer to your site. When people use Google, or other search engines, it leaves a signature that includes the word or phase they googled.

Some of these are specific that the person was looking for me: "Thom Singer Austin Texas" (that is clear that I was the target of the search), or "books on networking and business development" (again, clearly on target for what I write about). However, some people land on my pages with no intent of finding me or anything to do with the topics I cover on this blog.

The most common mistaken searches that lead to me have to do with European pop singer "Sandi Thom" (note the word "singer" and "thom"). Also, the lead singer for the band Radiohead is Thom Yorke (again, "singer" and "thom" are keywords). I assume that Thom Yorke and Sandi Thom also find their websites flooded with visitors who really have key interest in buying my books, hiring me to speak at a business conferences, or have other interests in business networking, sales, marketing, PR and related topics. I like to believe they secretly wonder "who is Thom Singer?". Okay, probably not.

There are also the times people land on my blog due to a string of searched words that have no relation to anything I write about, but that search engines point them toward me anyway. I always laugh at these. My favorite recent one was "my daughter sucks as a singer". They had to go many dozens of windows through the search before ending up with my link, so it made me laugh. What in the world were they looking for?

Back to the photog Jeff....because he takes pictures of pretty people and writes about them, the combination of words that appear on his blog lead to some funny searches:

how to forget your girlfriend
post your girlfriend
why girlfriend doesn’t want pictures taken
how to become a maxim photographer
how to look charming to your girlfriend
forget girlfriend
photographing nude
naked workshop
dirty photo very funny picture happy christmas
you suck maxim
alone with her nude
nude chilly
assignment photography self nude shy portrait
make my pictures look cool
stop junk mail from playboy
what singers ever get naked on the internet
40 year old woman naked
how to photograph a woman naked
how woman feel about having there picture taken while naked
dirty christmas cards
I DONT WANT TO BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND
san francisco undercover cop
PEOPLE LOOKING COOL
jeffs naked girlfriend
naked girl duck hunters

and this one:

Jeff Singer is a complete hack

I had one hit to my blog that said "Thom Singer is a jerk". OUCH.

Jeff went onto seed his blog with more keywords that would lead the seedy and other colorful searches to his blog. I am sure with just his above list I will see future "interesting" hits from people not really looking for this site!

So how did you get here?

Have A Great Day.

thom
http://www.thomsinger.com/

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