Another in a series of self-indulgent posts, for which I apologize but can’t resist.
Early this morning Keepa passed a milestone: the spam filter had trapped exactly as many pieces of spam as there have been legitimate comments posted. It took a few months for the spambots to identify Keepa as a target and the rate has picked up tremendously. I suppose it will only continue to climb now – today the spam is outnumbering legitimate comments more than three to one. Bless Akismet and its power to keep most of the trash off-screen!
J. Stapley upgraded my software about a week ago – thanks again, J. – and set up an analytics program that gives me far more information than I’ve ever had before about what people are looking for when they come to Keepa. (Regarding this, keep in mind that your privacy is protected – I know that people fall into the following categories and visit Keepa in response to certain queries, but there is absolutely no way for me to know who falls into which category or who made any particular query.)
A quarter of Keepa’s readers are hard-core Keepa’ninnies: you subscribe by RSS, or you come directly to Keepa by typing in the URL or because you have a link on your own desktop.
Half are readers who come because you have clicked a link at Mormon Archipelago, or Nothing Wavering, or an individual blog; many are frequent readers, but your first stop is somewhere else in the blogosphere.
The last quarter are people who probably only come once, unless they get hooked and join one of the first two categories. These are people who have entered a query on Google or some other search engine, and clicked through to Keepa from the search engine results.
Among the Google searchers of the past week:
Some are evidently Keepa’ninnies searching for specific posts they have already seen:
Others appear to be doing research. I’m proud to have posted content that meets a need, whether it’s gospel-related:
priesthood line of authority (this search appears with many variations)
im 40 and single and childless should I mourn the loss of never having kids
lds missionaries and arabs in france
a great many searches for help with Gospel Doctrine lessons
or more academic:
radioactive bottled water history
tahitian storm history 1903
william m. evarts jr
fisher harris utah
yellow roses, iosepa
I’m especially glad to know that my post on Dressing the Dead is waiting to be found by people who may have an urgent personal need for information when they make these queries:
dressing a dead body in temple clothes
dressing a mormon for burial
dressing deceased relative yourself
mormon relief society dressing the dead
relief society dress dead
why do mormons wear temple clothes when buried
Some queries leaving me scratching my head – I can’t even guess which posts resulted in these Google hits:
pole dancing utah stigma
do french mormons drink wine
And while I can guess the posts linked to these queries, I have to wonder why someone was even asking:
history behind creamed tuna casserole
can mormons eat sugar?
Some searches creep me out, for various reasons:
ardis parshall undergarments
My Love Letter to Boy Scouts is found by sickos with various pornographic queries
By far the biggest draw from the search engines, though, is The Great Mormon Marijuana Myth. After the author of the original salon.com article edited his post to indicate that “Mormon blogger Ardis Parshall disputes this,” my name has appeared on almost a hundred drug-related websites by potheads who copy the salon.com text. In addition to those who come to Keepa via those links, that post is accessed by people who ran these searches:
mormons marijuana
california marijuana 2009
california marijuana mormon
can mormons smoke weed?
cannabis in salt lake city
do mormons smoke weed
history of marijuana in mexico
marijuana history
marijuana lds
time it takes to be addicted to hashish
utah 1915 weed illegal
marijuana+laws+of+utah
what is the penalty for possession of the marijuana plant in utah?
why is the mormon church against marijuana
mormon utah marijuana law
can mormons in jamaica smoke weed
Remember, these are searches concerning Mormons and marijuana run within the past week; combined, they have brought 122 readers to Keepa, who average about six minutes reading that post. At least they’re reading it.
Continue reading at the original source →