I run Google Analytics on my web site, more out of evil curiosity than anything else. It’s not as if I’m trying to sell anything so I don’t need to know anything about “conversion rates”, whatever they are. It’s just nice to know that a few people are finding me and reading my musings. Typically, my site bounces along with 10-15 hits a day some of which, I’m sure, are due to myself checking or referencing my own material.
Having just returned from our lambing trip in France complete with wi-fi and blogability, I thought I’d spin into Goggle Analytics to see what the form had been. The summary page instantly had be wondering: it had a green arrow and number indicating visits were up 78.5% (over the previous month, I think). I clicked on the “view report” link to see the graph. Sure enough, for the lambing week I had the usual 14, 17, 13 kind of numbers. The weekend we were travelling home from lambing, though, showed a dramatic and quite extraordinary peek looking like the Matterhorn towering over the surrounding plain:
- Saturday 5th – 165
- Sunday 6th – 85
- Monday 7th – 28
What?!
The most popular page was shown as a recipe in Gastroblog – www.curdhome.co.uk/recipes/?p=67 [note to self: I really must try to get the WordPress pretty hyperlinks working one day] which turned out to be the eminent Mr. Rick Stein’s Ragout of Lamb from his French Odyssey. Whilst in Gastroblog’s administration pages I spotted a new comment awaiting moderation though, for some reason, WordPress had not notified me of it [note to self: must try to find out why notification emails are not getting through]. I read the comment and light began to dawn:
Saw Rick Stein make this on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen this morning and decided to look it up. Off to the butcher’s now to get the lamb. Drooling already!
– Nancy, SW France
Ah ha, so maybe that’s it! Folks could have been watching Saturday Kitchen, leapt onto the Internet in search of the recipe and found me.
I did a quick test: into the Google search page and enter “Ragout of lamb Stein” and, lo and behold, #1 on the list of hits – JC’S Gastroblog.
Bingo! Isn’t television wonderful?
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