900 Posts!

I always like to celebrate milestones on this blog, so today I'm making a post to say that this is my 900th blog entry under this domain. Hurrah!

In the past I  used to take this as an opportunity to go through the search terms that led people to the site, but then Google largely stopped showing them to me, so the last two times I talked about things like the most frequently visited articles instead. Since then, apparently Google has decided to give me back the ability to check search terms, so yay me!

One thing that's interesting is that the latest iteration of Google's search analytics doesn't just show me clicks (which are the primary source of interest, as they lead to people actually visiting the site) but also "impressions", which is to say that the blog came up as a search result for someone but wasn't clicked on. Previously there wasn't always a clear differentiation between the two.

The searches that lead to clicks are largely what you'd expect: people actually looking for the blog or coming across one of my rare guide articles, though there were a few unexpected results in there. For example there were a surprising number of people looking for ultimate cartel pack, presumably in search of information about what can be found in one.

It also pleased me to see what an unexpected success the story write-ups that I've been doing since KotFE appear to have been. With the increased focus on choices mattering I guess it's not surprising that people want to be sure they aren't going to end up with a bad result (does lana die if you refuse valkorion, take senya or koth, save vette or torian). Apparently not many other sites have covered this content in great detail. There was also a noteworthy amount of interest in my comparison between SWTOR and KOTOR, and in comparing SWTOR and ESO (the latter not something I would have expected).

The search terms that led to impressions but no clicks are (unsurprisingly) more out there, but that just makes them all the more amusing. Hilariously, the search term with the most impressions in the past nine months was... "Swtorista", hah! I guess that's what I get for writing about several of her events and projects. People are right not to click though, because obviously I'm not her. Though apparently I also got some actual clicks from the phrase "who is swtorista", and a smaller number of people ended up getting pointed towards my blog when they searched for Vulkk.

And now for some of the weirder searches:

the butt hutt - Do Hutts even have butts?

attention all planets of the solar federation - Apparently these are lyrics from the song 2112 by the Canadian band Rush. I'm not sure what that has to do with my blog, but then I realised that Redbeard used this line as title for one of his recent posts. Combined with some other search terms, this seems to indicate to me that Google even pays attention to my blog roll, and immediately notes that certain terms appearing on it might be a small indication that my blog has something to say on the subject too. I didn't expect that.

bee inspired trailers - /raises eyebrow

chiss rule 34 - This is a very roundabout way of saying that you're looking for porn featuring people with blue skin and red eyes. There were some more "rule 34" searches in there, but I can at least get why people might be interested in Master Satele for example, or aliens with extra appendages. But blue people is a rather peculiar fetish in my opinion.

frimmin on the frim fram - 21 impressions for this one! That made me google it myself and I'd never realised that this was "official" probe droid talk instead of just something random my then-boyfriend made up back when we were testing the free-to-play model on the PTS.

history channel battle of hoth - At first I was like "Why would anything like that be aired on the history channel?" but then I remembered that I learned only recently that a lot of TV station names have basically become "legacy names" that have nothing to do with the actual programmes on display anymore. (I myself haven't owned a TV in years, so I wouldn't know.)

how do you pronounce tatooine - This one fascinated me mainly because it implies a situation where someone came across the name of the planet one or more times purely in writing and didn't realise that there was an easy way of hearing people say it out loud. What a strange world we live in.

ion hazzikostas married - The question is: Why do you want to know?

is dulfy ok - Dulfy, former guide writer extraordinaire for several MMOs including SWTOR, has recently gone quiet, to the point that people are worrying about her and googling this! Word on the street seems to be that she's fine though, just busy with real life.

knights of the old republic 4 - I like how they just skipped 3!

methinks the hoth protest a month - That's not how that saying goes...

nobody cares about star wars anymore - While it seems to me that we are starting to feel a bit of franchise fatigue considering the speed with which Disney has been cranking out new content, that particular wording is so wrong it's funny.

reddit saltier than crait - I don't know what this person was expecting to find, but the wording made me smile.

vette jaesa I deserve both - I laughed out loud at this one simply due to the imperious tone. No "can I romance both vette and jaesa". This guy is making demands! Google is not going to help you there, friend.

Now, the next one of thse is going to be a big one, because I'll be hitting 1000 posts! At my current pace I'd expect to reach that around April or May next year. Enough time to think of something bigger to mark the occasion.