I never know what to make of big, sudden leaps upward in my readership. I can never figure out what stirs them. And then, often, just as bafflingly, they dissipate, and I am back to my regular readership, which feels more comfortable for me. It’s not that I’m not delighted to have new readers; really, I’m just quite curious about how I got them, and likely will never know.
About a year ago I posted about my stretch marks, and mysteriously, several months after that, that post started getting massive amounts of traffic. Since I didn’t know how that had come about–were strangers making fun of my tummy? or were other women happy to find solidarity with someone else who had stretch marks? I couldn’t say–I took that post down. I still wonder about that episode.
It’s not really possible for me, for anyone, to control readership; nor do I want to. But this is one of the fundamentals of blogging that sometimes I still manage to forget: it’s so public, and once I hit “publish,” there’s not much I can do about what happens. Mostly I’m at peace with it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get curious.
12 March 2008 at 11:38 am
Doesn’t wordpress give you stats on referrers, search terms, etc.? That stretch mark thing would’ve driven me nuts, especially not having that info…
12 March 2008 at 11:52 am
It does give me those stats, and yet I still couldn’t tell. It was neither direct referrers nor search terms. Just mysteriously, that particular post got a ton of traffic (on the order of hundreds more visitors a day).
12 March 2008 at 11:54 am
Hundreds! Yow! That would freak me right out.
12 March 2008 at 12:00 pm
I always get a little freaked out when people in my area start reading my blog. If someone actually recognized my kids in public, I think I would definitely stop posting pictures of my kids – maybe even stop blogging all together.
12 March 2008 at 12:02 pm
Caro–
So you can see why I took it down!
The search terms that come to me seem to figure largely on the jaundice Baby had as a newborn plus pumping-related terms and some completely random items I don’t know what to make of. But nothing about stretch marks.
Christy–
When I’m in a new public place with children, sometimes I muse about “what if I recognized someone from their blog? or they recognized me/us?” It sounds fun to me in theory, but I don’t know about in practice. And yes, I have several readers from my area, and I try not to think about it too hard. Do they KNOW me? If not, do they know they’re in my area? ARGH!
12 March 2008 at 12:30 pm
As you know, my blog is known to family/friends/coworkers. It freaks me out when I start to tell a story to someone and they say, I read it on the blog. Or people in my office whom I don’t know well start commenting on Sarah’s walking.
I use sitemeter and that makes me anxious sometimes. I like when people find the blog through some of the most common searches, like:
breastfeeding twins at XX months
pros and cons of being a twin
tandem nursing
day care ouch reports (Jordan doesn’t appreciate that one)
But then the creepy ones make me want to go private, like “naked little girl” or “twins kissing” Yuck!
How strange a world we live in when we share all this information with strangers and/or friends, and know so much about each other. Strange good and strange bad!
12 March 2008 at 1:26 pm
the great mysteries of life.