How To Know If
Ducks Are Unhappy: One Writer's Google Analytics
Adventure
by Roz Warren
Every writer
needs a good website, so folks can discover your
work, write you fan mail and maybe even offer you
assignments. I’m a humor writer, and lucky
for me, my son is a computer genius. For the
special discount he offers to clients who have
given birth to him, he set up www.rosalindwarren.com for me back in 2006, when he was
still in high school. It has served me well. From
time to time, he’s suggested a redesign,
but that site has sentimental value that a
newer, flashier site would lack. Visiting my
website never fails to make me nostalgic for the
days when my son was still a teenager, living
under my roof and ignoring all my sage motherly
advice, as opposed to now, when he’s all
grown up, living in Baltimore and ignoring all my
sage motherly advice.
Tom recently
added “Google Analytics” to the site,
which lets me track who visits and where
they’re coming from. While it’s no
surprise that most of my readers are from this
country, I was tickled to find that I’ve
gotten traffic from as far away as the United
Arab Emirates. Belgium! Bulgaria! Senegal! My
reach is global. My readers are everywhere! (Of
course there are only a few from each of these
venues. But still…)
Google
Analytics also turned up a few mysteries. I
seemed to get a disproportionate number of visits
from Mexico. And one of my stories,
“Furniture Fights” was drawing way more
than its fair share of traffic. It all became
clear when I got an email from a Mexican language
student who, seeking an English story to
translate into Spanish, searched for “funny
short stories“ and ended up with
“Furniture Fights,“ which she returns
to often as she works on the assignment.
She’s promised to send me a copy of
“Peleas de Meubles“ when it is
completed.
My favorite
Google Analytics feature is the “key word
search,” which lists the search terms that
have brought people to Rosalindwarren.com.
Writers love words, and it’s fascinating to
know exactly what combination of words brings
readers to my work. Most search terms are, of
course, just what you’d expect.
“Roz Warren.” “Humorous short
stories.” “Funny stories online.”
But there are subtle and interesting variations:
“Short short humors.” “Online
small stories.“ And the rather formal
“Humor of Rosalind.” I got a kick
out of the fact that “Great short stories
humor” brought me traffic. Google thinks
I’m not only “funny” but
“great.” I like that!
Some search
requests are puzzling. For instance, “he
took me to drive.” What was this searcher
looking for? And why did their search engine
bring them here? Not to mention
“Wet his pants on the plane.”
Really? There’s nothing in my work about
incontinent fliers. Yet, somebody was searching
for them and Google brought this searcher to me.
Thanks Google! (I think.)
Whoever typed
in “favorite sociology lesson ever”
probably wasn’t looking for “Sociology
Lesson,” a short story about a girl growing
up in Detroit who learns how to deal with school
yard bullies. But I’d like to think the
searcher paused to read and enjoy the story
anyway. Likewise, I’m sure the person who
looked for “insensitive older brother“
didn’t expect to wind up reading a short
story about two siblings who compete with each
other to become the world’s best writer. Or
maybe she did. Who knows?
The search
“is it good to have blood pressure at one
twenty over seventy” brought one reader to
“Outpatient,” a story in which the
protagonist happens to have her blood pressure
taken and it is, indeed, 120/70. Although
this fictional encounter probably
wasn’t what the searcher had in mind, the
doc in the story does conclude that this is a
good, healthy number. So maybe it was all for the
best?
Other
pleasantly random searches which have brought
folks to my site are “Linda obsessed with
furniture,“ and the rather zen-like
“she stops waiting.” But my favorite
search term of all so far? “How to know if
ducks are unhappy.”
My story
“Good for the Ducks,” is about a group
of Jewish ducks on a pond in Boston’s
public garden who witness two suicides in
one day (Go ahead -- Google it!) So
it makes perfect sense that a search for unhappy
ducks would deliver someone to my site. And yet,
search-wise, this is a total dead end. My story,
while entertaining, will not tell you how to
make an actual duck happy. Although I love
knowing that somebody out there wants to try.
Another
searcher came to the same story with the rather
cryptic search: “pretend floating ducks to
buy.” What exactly was her or she looking
for? I’ll never know.
If you have a
website yourself (and who doesn‘t, these
days?) I recommend Google Analytics. Not
only is it fascinating to discover where your
traffic comes from, but now that I’ve added
GA, I find that the website my son created to
entertain my readers often entertains me too.
When I log on to check my stats, I can’t
wait to see what curious and implausible searches
have brought people from as far away as Iran and
India to a site featuring humorous stories about
Wildebeests, Segways, waterfowl and the GOP.
In conclusion,
because this essay may well appear on line,
I’d like to leave you with the following
phrases. “America’s favorite
humorist” “Hilarious short
stories” and “Your duck will love this
site.” That ought to bring me some web
traffic. Perhaps it will even bring me the reader
I most want to reach -- you.
|
