The Wardman Wire

I thought it would be interesting to analyse how the search engines have been sending traffic to the Wardman Wire.

[Edit 24/6/2007 AM: Update. Comments now turned on.]This blog is now just 3 months old, and in the last six weeks my “search” visitors have increased from about 25 a week to 80-100 a week. This article is an attempt to find out what aspects of the site are drawing them here.

I have taken 24 search requests, traced them back to the search engine responsible, and looked at:

• The search engine concerned.
• The ranking in the results.
• The search-phrase used.
• The page on my blog where the request was pointing.

I have then reviewed the results to draw some general conclusions.

Cartoon Credit: www.weblogcartoons.com

Capsule Conclusions

My detailed analysis will be in a further article to be published tomorrow, but these are the brief conclusions:

• I run a dozen or more headline feeds in my sidebar. These brought several hits, but appear to have an slightly adverse affect on Googlerank.
• Several hits came as a result of stories that had moved off the front page before the visitor arrived.
• I had a couple of visitors as a result of common keywords that were at the top for a very short time.
• A surprising number of visitors came via “non traditional” search engines, such as mobile phone searches and image searches.
• There are a fair percentage of searches where the visitor sees an article unrelated to their phrase, and visits anyway.

For the detailed analyis, you will have to revisit tomorrow - as this article is already quite long. But do please comment below if you have anything to say.

Detailed Results

The best way to understand these results is probably to simply go through and open *all* the links in separate tabs in a browser, then close them one by one as you do your survey.

These are the last 20 visits I have received from search engines on The Wardman Wire, with my highly erudite comments:

• “resistance fall of man how do i report that my banning was wrong” (google.com 10th result) landed here. The article is two weeks old.- This hit one of a number of articles I have written around topics raised by the Manchester Cathedral vs Sony dispute.
• “amicus political levy” (search.orange.co.uk 11th result - 1st on page 2) landed here. The article is three months old.- Good, one of continuing my areas of interest is Trade Union Reform.
• “greenpeace” (google blogsearch 35th result - 5th on page 4) landed here. The article is three weeks old.- Quite encouraging. The article is three weeks old and about Greenpeace’s governance, and that is a debate that needs some publicity. Few people look this far down Google.
• “erotic lingerie” (microsoft live image search - 1st page) landed here. The article is four weeks old.- This came through an image search (note: use meaningful titles and names for images - this was “20070521-harrogate-lingerie-show”). Interesting that a whole page of “lingerie or less” images and they chose to click on this one.

• “alex salmond speech” (yahoo.com search 7th result) landed here. The article is three weeks old.- A surprisingly good ranking.
• “rss calendar wordpress plugin” (google.com search 6th result) landed here. The article is two days old.- Good result in competitive keyword area perhaps due to brand new article.
• “INDENPENT LINGERIE” (ms live search 1st result.) landed here. The article is six weeks old.- “Twittering is for twits” article. Somebody made the same typo as I did - there was only one hit in the entire Live Search database. Correctly spelled there are 684,000 results.
• “Flourishing live music sees concert revenues jump” (google.com search result 6) landed here. The article is four weeks old.- A wildcard result. The search found a headline from the FT in my sidebar rather than any content in the article. The search would not have worked 24 hours later.
• “arleen ouzounian” (google.co.uk search about result 25. Search displayed 100 results per page. 63 results in total) landed here. The article is three days old.- Similar to 8, the search landed on a comment on a recent article in my sidebar. Nothing to do with the article on the same page. It did land on my content, however.
• “BLACK CHURCH MBE AFFILIATION” (microsoft live search result).- I can’t trace this one.
• “Politics+blogs” (google blog search 2nd result out of 605,000) landed here. The article is two days old.- This article was brand new, but has since achieved a few backlinks. A good result for a competitive keyword phrase.
• “wardman wire” (google.co.uk search 1st reult out of 58,000) landed here. The article is my home page.
  - Someone looking for me found the front page on Google UK. Excellent. If I can’t win these, then I may as well give up.
• “professional development” (canadian google blog search near the top) landed here. The article was one day old at the time.- This result was a wildcard, and I probably only had a couple of hours near the top of the results.
• “Britons could face £5 US entry fee” (Google.co.uk search 20th result out of 100,000. Searcher was displaying 100 results per page) landed here. The article is two months old.- A bit of a wildcard. The search phrase picked up a headline from my sidebar.
• “Brent Spar, Greenpeace” (Google Blogsearch search 1st result of 203) landed here. The article is three weeks old.- A good result. The article is three weeks old and about Greenpeace’s governance, and that is a debate that needs some publicity. Shows the power of niche search phrases.
• “peter blackham in court” (Google.co.uk search 2nd page of google.co.uk) landed on my blog homepage when it looked like this. The article was brand new at the time.- A good result for a popular story. I blogged this quite early, and Wordpress pinged Google when the story was published.
• “Music on a summers evening kenwood” (Google.co.uk personal digital assistant search result 1 from 122,000) landed here. The article is twelve weeks old - and is the first article on this blog.- My title phrase was carefully selected - I used the title of the concert series from the publicity. I am surprised that it did this well this far on.
• “video game artist income” (Google.com search result 7 from 3,660,000) landed here. The article is two weeks old.- This is a bit of a serendipitous hit that landed on a story I have been covering in considerable depth.
• “Joke of the day” (Google.com blog search in first 10 results from a huge number on a competitive phrase) landed here. The article was brand new.- This result was a short term hit, and I probably only had a couple of hours near the top of the results.
• “Rogers Morgan Govender” (Google.com search result 12 from about 900) landed here. The article is two weeks old.- This landed on a category page, and is a story that I have covered in much depth. It demonstrates a certain advantage in using a more detailed key-phrase. “Rogers Govender” has 60,000 results.
• “legal constraints in photography” (Google.co.uk search on the first page of Google) landed here. The article is two weeks old.- A good and accurate result from Google - the article relates to the Manchester Cathedral vs Sony story and was the first major legal anaysis of legal constraints on photographers available on the net.
• “gordon engine brown labour the tank thomas cartoon” (Google.co.uk search top 20 results from 120,000) landed here.- I have no idea why anyone would do this search. It landed on my archive index page - quite powerful as it lists 350 articles now.
• “YEREMI VARGAS ;IE” (Google.com search result 35 from 773. On page 4 of results.) landed here.- This search picked up a headline from my sidebar, and landed on a category page.
• “Venture chief raises tax fears” (Google.com search rsult 15 from 35. All results on one Google page) landed here. The article is one week old.- This search picked up a headline from my sidebar, and landed on a category page.

Wrapping Up

This could be a Meme - but I’m staying off memes until the last one has worked through the system. And I don’t think most bloggers will spend the time to edit 50 links into one article. So perhaps it would have to be “Your most recent 10 visitors from search services”.

If you have any thoughts - please add them to the comments below. I’m particularly interested to hear the results of any similar analyses - as I haven’t seen a detailed snapshot done previously.

Tags: search engine optimisation, seo, search results, good search result, google, microsoft live search, headline feeds, analysis of search results, problogger, effective web design, wordpress, how to choose good keywords, pillar article, wardman wire tarffic, google pagerank, rss, really simple syndication[tags]search engine optimisation, seo, search results, good search result, google, microsoft live search, headline feeds, analysis of search results, problogger, effective web design, wordpress, how to choose good keywords, pillar article, wardman wire tarffic, google pagerank, rss, really simple syndication[/tags]