Guest Blogging: Karen's Analysis of the FFT Readers

Tonight, I'm going to put aside the keyboard to allow Karen to share some of her thoughts. Take it away, sweetie!

How'd You Get Here?

Did You Know: Food for Thought gets more hits from Google searches related to Fred Steak, Real Men of Genius, the Testicle Festival, and the nutritional value of food (generally sushi and Johnsonville Brats) than anything else?

For almost a year now, Food for Thought has been a personal labor of love consistently read by a relatively small group of friends and family. But in recent weeks, traffic to the site has been inching its way upward and Loren has been getting pretty excited. Being a Web 2.0 guy, he’s happy to see his work shared with a broader community. People have been coming from all over the world and getting here in the most interesting ways. I know because Loren (on more than one occasion) has shared his sitemeter statistics with me. While the numbers are nothing compared to the big blogs out there, I think the findings are worthy of note and would like to share some of my favorites.

Before we get started, let me stress again that Loren is thrilled by everyone who comes to visit his blog. The views presented here are mine only. Please don’t take any offense if you happen to see one of your own search terms listed; I am noting it because it was either entertaining or thought-provoking in some way. Come back often!

First, a look at the demographics of Food for Thought readers (from recent statistics):
The majority of readers (82%) come from the US. No big surprise there. But also represented are Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Singapore, Indonesia, China, and the infamous Unknown Country. I know there are German readers out there too - not sure why you guys are getting slighted.

Lots of folks come into the site either through referring URLs (Food Wishes, Carleton, etc.) or personal bookmarks. But as mentioned above, many also come in as the result of various searches. Examples include:

• Testicle Festival
  
  Search terms have included: testicle festival utah, testicle festival woodruff, black gold festival 2007 woodruff. Similar searches result in links to the post about the festival at Mama's Place.
  


• Real Men of Genius
  
  Search terms include: bud light real men of genius, bud light present real men of genius, real men of genius boneless buffalo wings inventor.
  


• Food Nutritional Value
  
  Search terms have included: unfiltered sake calories, calories in unagi don, compare calories in baby back ribs and fish, calories in johnsonville brats. Links are taken to the July 2006 and August 2006 archives (among other places).
  


• Fred Steak
  
  Search terms have included: freds marinade, freds steak marinade, fred’s steak recipe, fred steak.
  

Beer can chicken and cherry picking are also starting to pick up popularity due to recent posts. And math pie/cosahedron/mathematical baking has also popped up more than you might think. Other intriguing searches include: quadruple BK stacker, taco in a bag, wild hotdish, loren cook "grill" (from China no less), and mmmm.

There are too many searches to even begin to mention (and the history only goes back so far). My, until very recently, all time personal favorite (and perhaps the most humorous search getting to Food for Thought) is: massage happy ending boulder co

But a new front runner has taken its place. Thanks to a searcher in New Jersey with ideals similar to mine, "beets nausea" can take its rightful place in the pantheon of Food for Thought Searches. And that lucky reader ended up reading a lovely story.

Let’s see what you come up with next!

Posted by Karen