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2011-02-19

I wrote a not-even-half-baked log-parsing script so I could go through my website logs and see how people were finding my site. With all due respect, I'm not interested in how my friends arrived at my site - they generally either have the URL bookmarked or in a feed reader or some combination thereof. No, this is targeted at the people who don't know me and wind up on my site (and hopefully find it interesting). I analyzed only the most recent week's logs: Feb 13 - Feb 19. I have my site's lifetime of logs, though, so I could feasibly run this analysis on the entire history, if I automated it a tad more.

I get the vast majority of my non-self-referred traffic from Google. This does not particularly surprise me. What does surprise me, though is some of the search queries that manage to land on my site. So I went back to Google and performed the same searches, and noted which result my site was, at the time of writing. All query strings are reproduced verbatim.

Google query stringGoogle rankingReferred pageComments
18F2550 linux7thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/Whoa. A chip name and "linux" gets you my website? Crazy.
Based on HID-Test by Christian Starkjohann4thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/So, that's the guy who wrote the V-USB library I used for that project. Does it merit a top-10 result? I doubt it.
drew fisher1sthttp://zarvox.org/We already discussed this one :)
cr48 cut and paste shell to chrome qemacs4thhttp://zarvox.org/shortlog/month
pollingg routine in assembly language4thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/Spelling mistake is faithfully reproduced
nick peach hbgary22ndhttp://zarvox.org/shortlog/monthThis is what happens when a bunch of otherwise unrelated blog posts get indexed together.
zarvox5thhttp://zarvox.org/
inside of ddr padsImages: 31sthttp://zarvox.org/ddrpad/gallery/ddr_pad_project/original_img_1118_jpg.jpegPeople seem willing to go through a lot more images than regular web results.
pg&e fee emergency power hook-ip???http://zarvox.org/shortlog/monthI have no idea. I couldn't find this result.
atmega328pImages: 6thhttp://zarvox.org/ddrpad/RedArrow.pngFor some reason, I get a surprising number of Google Image results for the red and blue arrow schematics from that project.
Use Xbox 360 Dance pad on stepmania7thhttp://zarvox.org/ddrpad/Here's what you do: you plug it in. That's all.
atmega328 led internal resistor pull-up8thhttp://zarvox.org/ddrpad/
Drew Fisher1sthttp://zarvox.org/Note the capitalization.
usb hid controller parts9thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/
drew fisher2ndhttp://zarvox.org/resume.pdfThis one found my resume, which is a good second result after my website for my name, methinks.
v-usb hid report descriptor size calculate34thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/
pic micro snes controller usb5thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/And I didn't even use a PIC for that project.
how can i know if my usb snes adapter works2ndhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/Try it out and see? Also, really? 2nd?
miraculin and effecting taste????http://zarvox.org/shortlog/monthPedantic: wrong use of "effecting"
light dance pad10thhttp://zarvox.org/ddrpad/I happen to know I'm #1 for "LED dance pad"
rock band keytar python script????http://zarvox.org/shortlog/monthI couldn't find this one in the results. Color me surprised.
at90USB breadboard37thhttp://zarvox.org/usbsnes/I guess I mentioned that chip on my page, and how I didn't use it.
Drew Fisher berkeley4thhttp://zarvox.org/resume.pdfThis search came from a Mac user in Germany. The first three results were from a class wiki and the BiD webpage.

I also had one user manage to arrive at my site via Yahoo, with the query "arrow LED using microcontroller" which found http://zarvox.org/ddrpad/.

I had one visitor from a Windows 98 machine.

Today I learned the proper name for the condition where you have eyes of different colors: Heterochromia iridum. One of my friends in middle school had one golden eye and one brown one.


Comments:

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Jono | 2011-02-19T20:03:45.101241

Careful - how did you search? Google customises heavily, so to get an idea of what other people see you need to logout, and perhaps go to an anonymous search website.

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Drew Fisher | 2011-02-19T20:10:03.596327

Jono: noting that behavior, I dropped cookies for the searches (yay, incognito mode!), but I recognize that even just my IP and User-Agent string may still influence search results.

I could also try using my dedi as a SOCKS proxy, but this was late last night and I didn't feel like being that hardcore about it. I'd rather crowdsource it and have folks like you point out any discrepancies you find. :P