Have You Been Googled?

Teacher Feature

Wondering how somebody finds your blog?

If somebody googles:

• "Anne Frank"
  
• "Toys at Grandma's House"
  
• "Mother Goose Costume"
• "Lifesavers"
• "Paper Bag"
• "Punctuation"
• "Miles Goodyear Cabin"

and a bunch of others, my blog is listed on the first page of the Google Search Results. They are pretty random topics, and I don't know why they have made the big time, but it gives me a total thrill! Every once in a while I get an email from somebody saying they wrote a paper on Miles Goodyear and used my post, or used my Anne Frank post to teach their history class. It's pretty fun!

My posts never get tons of comments (thank you to everyone who does comment) but lots of people read them. My advice:

Never judge your readership by the number of comments!

Here are two ways I've figured out to see if anybody's reading. (There are probably more accurate ways but I don't know them.)

This is how I track using my Blogger account:

1. On my blog I click on New Post (as if I'm writing a new post.)
2. Across the top there are little tabs: Posting, Comments, Settings . . . Stats
3. Click on Stats.
4. There is a list of Popular Posts, telling how many page views they've had.
5. At the top I can click on Now/Day/Week/Month/All Time.
   
6. When I click on All Time, I can see how many times someone has been to that particular page.
   
7. I wonder why, and try to figure out what works and what doesn't. I give up.
   
8. Then I explore and click on everything in there.

This is how I find out using New Stat Counter:

1. You'll have to google New Stat Counter and join up. I can't remember how to do this, but it must be easy because I did it. I don't have a fancy account I have to pay for. The free one is fine for me.
2. In New Stat Counter there are features down the side. I click on Key Words. That tells me what key words people googled that led them to my blog post.
   
3. Clicking on Popular Pages tells me how many times someone has visited a certain page. I can click on daily/weekly/monthly, etc. at the top and it gives me the statistics.

To see where the post was ranked, I typed the key words into Google and read down the first page of listings. Try it! You might be pleasantly surprised!