Personalized Search Looking at Weblogs
May 9th, 2007 by Michael Gray in SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
So I’m looking through my stats in log programs and I’m seeing strange things. Hundreds and in one case nearly a thousand people coming from keywords that I can’t place anywhere in SERP’s. I’ve tried the MCDar data center tool and still not finding anything. I’m still looking but at this point, but my most likely candidate is personalized search. Yes these are from sites that are working the blog, social search, linkbait scene but it’s still rather annoying to not be able say/see anything with any level of certainty.
Informal poll are you seeing traffic for keywords in your logs you can’t trace back to SERP’s, and if you are what are you attributing that to?
Sphere It
May 9th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Try looking in your raw log files and see what the HTTP referer is.
May 9th, 2007 at 5:59 am
I got all excited just the other day a 1st page serp for SEO service - goes to Google only to find nish zilch nada.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:55 am
This is no surprise for me. Ever since I started to “stumble” like crazy, traffic has been coming in but not just directly from stumbling. I think “stu” is on to something: checking the raw log files may reveal what you are looking for.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Yes I have been seeing it for a few monthes I think. I am on the fence as to the cause. I suspect it might be from submitting to google base.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Lots of traffic coming in for keywords I can’t seem to find in Google/Yahoo!/MSN for my site. And perversely, keywords that according to Google the site comes up high for but the pages are then nowhere to be seen in the SERPs. Definitely personalised search affecting it.
Yes, Stumbleupon is driving some traffic too.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I wrote one post about “improving your sex life as a diabetic” and now I’m getting all these searches on how to find sex in different cities and with certain types of people.
I think the wordpress plugin for recently commented posts might have combinded that title with on page words of other posts and ranked me for those terms.
Nice way to discover some real nichey keywords to easily get into.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Check the logs for clever referrer spamming… multiple keywords per line… Clickracks shows them as search terms.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:37 am
John I have caught some jokers doing that on my blog but the other site I am seeing it on is a pretty unknown. I don’t see the motivation..
May 10th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Hows about searchs for ‘oprah winfrey nude’?
People are arriving at my site but I can’t find the serps.
May 13th, 2007 at 6:51 am
The might be using longer keyword phrases. Or maybe personalized search ?
May 20th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I’ve noticed top ranking position in country-localized versions of Google. I can never find myself in those position for my normal Google, but when I search through, say, Colombian Google (google.com.co) I rank #1 in good queries that send good traffic.