Made a post over on my blog for the USGENWEB county site I coordinate. If anyone is interested in seeing what kind of data I get from Google Analytics, you might find it interesting. I don’t see very many blogs discuss use data – it can be a very important source for tracking how your site is used. Besides, with graphs and charts, it is also just neat to look at 🙂
This does remind me though to share one of my dreams for my blogs. Over the past few weeks, I have been contacted by several researchers with shared connections either to my family, or to families I’m researching and posted information about. These experiences embody for me exactly why I have these blogs in the first place; to post information so that others may find it useful and to establish connections.
With WordPress, I have the ability to see what search terms people are entering to land on my blog and everytime I look at the keywords I certainly feel that there are missed opportunities for connecting. In my professional world, one of the blogs I read is that of John Battelle, an expert in the implications of “search.” In one of his prior posts (which I cannot find right now…), he discusses a mechanism to reach out to visitors to your blog by presenting them with a custom pop-up box based on what keywords landed them there in order to help them locate relevant content on your site more effectively. This is something I would love to do on my blogs in order to try and engage even further.
For example, on my main genealogy blog, in the past 30 days some of the searches that have brought people to my blog include:
- “sons of the confederacy” — probably b/c of my post describing the DNA testing approach I’m taking for Kalonji’s ancestry.
- “william blount mcclellan” — again, Kalonji related. I believe someone in WB’s family was the father of Kalonji’s great-grandfather — could a possible descendant be one of these searchers? I may need a male descendant for comparative DNA testing — was this person the one?
- “browning genealogy” — this is a database of newspaper and obit information out of Evansville Indiana that I have blogged about as it is WONDERFUL resource. Are these other genealogists interested in Evansville too?
- “the battle plantation” – my recent post of my ancestors connection with this family. I actually had someone contact me who may also have connections to this plantation – but is he the only one who searched it? I doubt it.
- “family tree of honus wagner” — I have a friend who’s ancestors have connections to him that I’ve blogged about before. Is the person who searched and visited me a descendant? how cool would it be to provide more context to Honus’ upbringing that my friend’s grandfather could share?
All missed opportunities for connections in my mind. Of course you could argue that all the person searching has to do is leave a comment, but actively engaging them would be cool. One day I’ll get to it and let you know how it turns out.