The World According to Google

If you are like me, about half of your hits are the result of a Google string that lands on your Blog. Your StatCounter can show you exactly what people are searching for and then you say to yourself, "Did I really write about that?"

I had two recent Google surprises. When we were in Israel, we met with David Baker, the chief press officer in the Prime Minister’s Office. I wrote something about the meeting in my Blog, taking care not to include any real specifics since we were told that all comments were "off the record." Soon after returning home, I got an e-mail from David Baker, in which he said he enjoyed speaking to our group and would like to do so again at some later date. I thought that was pretty ambitious of him to have gotten all of our e-mail addresses and sent out such a message. But no, my husband didn’t get the e-mail. So I politely asked Mr. Baker how he had gotten my address, to which he replied that he had Googled himself and found his name in my Blog! We exchanged a few more messages, in which I could finally ask the questions there had not been time for in Jerusalem.

Just last week I got a message intended for my daughter, which said something like, "Are you the Rachel who worked at the Arlington Faccia Luna in 2002?" The message came from Wendell Brito in Brazil, who had Googled with "Faccia Luna" in the search string. Just who was this Wendell? A server? A busboy? A customer? I passed Rachel’s e-mail address on to him, since as it turns out, I was just the messenger.

For the longest time after I wrote a post on NYDJ (not your daughter’s jeans), I received lots of hits with "NYDJ" in the string. I assumed that they were in some way connected to marketers of these jeans, but who knows, maybe they were just other satisfied customers.

When I see readers who came by way of Google, I just can’t help but go back and read the post that they found. I wonder to myself if what I wrote was of any help to them. I wonder if they ever turn into repeat readers.

I am constantly amazed at what a treasure trove of information and pictures Google is. How many times do you search for something and come up empty-handed? I just went and Googled myself and found multiple references to things I had recently written.

If you are one of those people who landed here through Google, you are welcome! You make my stats much more interesting!