New Years also offers us a momentary respite from time, where we can stand on the pinnacle between two years and take in a panoramic view, looking backward (to celebrate a good year or terminate a bad one) and forward, to the promise of what's to come.
In the spirit of looking back, I want to offer some thoughts and lessons learned from the search terms that brought readers to my blog, for good, bad, or otherwise, during 2012.
First, I learned not to use high profile phrases or images if they don't directly relate to my topic. My very early post wicked witch of the west? has drawn more hits than any other post I've written, but I'm sure it's the least read. The people searching for "Almira Gulch on a bike," who land on my site almost everyday, might find the image they're looking for, but they're hardly an audience predisposed to read an article about bicycling to the grocery store. Not my best marketing effort!
I also learned to never include pictures of Olivia in posts that contain the word "tween." Or perhaps, just don't ever use the word "tween." Can you guess why not? Creepers using horrifying search phrases like "cute tweeners in sexy underware" (sic) have landed more than once on some of my posts about the kids. I didn't have pictures of Olivia on those posts, thank goodness, but that was only by luck. It seems like a person's computer should self-destruct with the entry of word combinations like that, but since it doesn't, I simply strive to be more careful.
Sometimes it's not such a bad thing that creepers find me. I can't say I'm sorry that people who search with phrases like “think that the u.s. gymnastics team is hot,” and “a very sexy jordyn weiber," end up on my post glamolympics. While I doubt too many of these people actually read the whole post, I'm hopeful that my rant about the sexual exploitation of minors shames at least a few of them.
On a different note, one person came to my post take that Mr. media after searching with the phrase, "sad that I'm fat." Seeing these words made me sad too. I imagined this unhappy person sitting all alone at his or her computer, feeling too large and looking for what? thinness? affirmation? hope? I was glad I could offer him/her a few words about my own struggle to find self-love in a world that judges far too harshly. Maybe it helped.
Speaking of my own body image, one day the words "fat roll hanging over pants" appeared in my stats. Since the phrase essentially quotes my post on the subject, I looked at it in fascination: had someone googled my fat roll? Really, I don't know what to say about that.
The same goes for the fact that someone came to my post over 40 and gone polka dotty by searching "women 40+ no bra pictures." I can't make anything of that without knowing the motivation for the search: to ridicule? admire? I just hope this person wasn't in league with the person who searched for "disgusting fat huntress pics." I can handle being a bra-less fat huntress just fine, but no need to bring the word disgusting into it, right?
