What were they looking for?

One advantage of hosting one’s own web server is that one gets full access to the log files, indicating stuff about who visited and when etc.

I’m using AWStats to produce nice analyses of my web site’s traffic. For example, Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days of the week, and early morning and early evening are generally the busiest times of day.

By far the most interesting part of the analysis, however, is the “what people typed into Google to find your site” section. The HTTP-referrer field in the web logs shows where people came from – and if it was Google, you get to see what their search terms were. This is a real eye opener.

Some run-of-the-mill entries, mostly giving hits to my Why Microsoft Word may be bad for your health article:

• “meta data microsoft word”;
• “metadata microsoft word read”;
• “remove unwanted format from word doc”;
• “microsoft word versioning information”;
• etc.

And some more interesting ones:

• “microsoft word alastair campbell”;
• “microsoft word save as template macro repeated twice” (what??);
• “nachi virus keeps coming back”;

And now the pick of the bunch, apparently from someone using a desktop PC at Microsoft:

• “bad issues with microsoft word”

Made me chuckle, anyway … 😆