I’ve known for awhile that my average daily Sitemeter traffic fluctuates mainly with search engine referrals. The variation can be as much as a few hundred hits a day. There are other factors, of course – the end of the legislative session and approaching elections always drive numbers up – but this is one that comes and goes unpredictably.
Last week, I noticed that a Google blog search for my URL suddenly started only returning stale links – compare to a Technorati search and you’ll see what I mean. Coincidentally or not, my Sitemeter stats took a dive at the same time.
I’m not alarmed by this, and I don’t depend on ad revenues so it’s not like this hurts me, but I am curious. What causes this to happen, and what if anything can I do about it? I presume that at some point it’ll fix itself, but it’s always nice to be able to be proactive. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Hey, Charles,
It may simply be that that’s not the right search string to find hits for your URL.
To get that, you have to specify that you’re using the name to specify the *source* site:
site:offthekuff.com
Otherwise, it just thinks you’re looking for appearances of the term “offthekuff.com” — which can often happen when others link to you.
Hope that helps.