Saturday, September 01, 2007

Help, I Can't Cope with My Stats Program!

It's not the mechanics that are giving me trouble, or interpreting the data. The problem is the search strings. Maybe it's because I'm a teacher, or maybe because I've spent so much of my career writing consumer information (or maybe I'm just obsessive-compulsive), but I have a deep need to be able to RESPOND to searches.

Today, for instance, someone visited this blog based on the search string "Rick Springfield's daughter".

Rick Springfield doesn't have a daughter; he has two sons. See, it's just such a quick, easy little answer. I want to drop a quick email to the person searching for information on Rick Springfield's daughter and let her know. But I don't know who she was, and she already didn't find what she was looking for on my blog, so she probably won't be back.

It's even worse on my Catholic blog. Over there, I get search strings that are questions, search strings like, "Can a Catholic marry a non-Catholic?"

Well, see, I HAVE the answer to that, but it's not on my blog. And it's a shade more important, I think, than whether or not Rick Springfield has a daughter. But there's nothing I can do about it now.

I'm actually in the process of putting together a Squidoo lens on Catholic marriage purely in response to the number of questions about the subject that are landing people to my Catholic blog. And I'm glad I was inspired to do that, but...um...see...it's not quite good enough for me. Because, after all, the PERSON WHO ASKED THE QUESTION might not see it.

Okay, it's much clearer now. It's definitely the obsessive-compulsive thing.

4 comments:

Emily Suess said...

I have the same reaction to my search stats too! I have a strong desire to help, but no way to accomplish it.

TrueMirage said...

don't think of it as ocd, think of it as an overwhelming need to connect. much nicer.

Barb Matijevich said...

I notice that you didn't mention the person who found the dog blog by searching for, "Dog keeps peeing in his water dish."

I don't have a need to answer the people who find me through random searches but I sort of, kind of, okay-- REALLY -- want to MEET THEM. And for the people who search for me looking for "So, the thing is Blog" --I pretty much want to send them a present.

Tiffany said...

Well...the thing is...I don't have an answer for that person whose dog keeps peeing in his water dish. Well, except maybe "EWWW!", but that probably wouldn't be very helpful...