Who Lands Here ...and Why?

I imagine most bloggers are curious about who looks at their site. I am. Knowing your audience helps focus what you choose to write about, or, at a minimum, how you decide to write it.

For example, if I knew my parents were regular visitors, then I probably would NOT post this link and would NOT say how I'm going to sneak one of those ring tones onto my thirteen-year-old son's phone and then call him when he's with one of his girl friends. No, that wouldn't be a good post for them to read, lest they wonder who really is the thirteen-year-old. And it was purely hypothetical anyway...

But unfortunately (or fortunately?) the anonymity of the internet makes it impossible to know who's looking at your blog, so it's probably best to assume your [parents; boss; children; spouse; etc.] are checking in. Reminds me to keep up a certain level of maturity.

I do keep a freebie hit counter on this blog, which tells me a few interesting stats such as: the number of visitors, their ISP and location, and how they were referred (if coming from some other site that links here). The visitor's location is often screwy, for example, it says I'm in Bakersfield for some reason.

When visitors land here after doing a web search, the hit counter shows what they search for. Some of them are pretty amusing so I decided to keep track for a week or two. Here are a few search-engine referrals:

"Aaron Musicant's Ass" -- that's the one that prompted me to start tracking some of the searches. I'd say there have probably been around 20 Aaron stalkers who landed here.

Aaron is, as most SB locals know, a great kid who grew up racing with Echelon. He was one of the top juniors in California, with good skills with a snappy sprint. His family supported local cycling and even hosted an up-and-coming Hilton Clarke for a year or so. Then Aaron went off to college and eventually made his way down to LA. He'd occasionally come back to SB for weekend rides and races, but basically I lost track of him.


Then one day as I walked through the room where my son was watching TV, I saw this. Holy crap, that's Aaron! My son was very impressed that I knew a big-time TV star!

So, for all those teeny boppers who land on my blog hoping for a shot of Aaron's ass, all I can say is... Sorry. But now at least you know a little bit more about him.



A lot of people land here after searching for some kind of advice about a problem. Here are a few of the recent queries:

"Mavic freehub sticking" -- That one shows up nearly every week, and google sends them to this post from last winter. That tells me it's a common problem. BTW, that post also gets hit a lot by people searching for torque-wrench info.

"gastric bypass for 20-year-olds" -- hmmm.... not sure I can help with that one.

"Pee off the bike" -- Makes me proud that I'm on the first page of google results for that important bit of information.

"How to blood dope" -- Excuse me?!? That's a bit disquieting, and not only that, I just did the same search and found that my blog isn't even in the top-10 pages of results. Somebody out there is really digging deep.

...and sometimes the searches that land people here are just a little weird, for instance...

"What idiot would compost goat-head thorn weed?" -- Well, I can't help you with that one, but I agree, it's a good question!

Finally, somebody from the midwest searched for:

"Druber smack" -- Not sure, but maybe you want to go here for druber smack.

That's all for now ...gotta clean up my desk.