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I spent some time peeking at my Google Site Search stats last week, and learned some things about the stuff that readers search for on Offbeat Bride. (To reiterate, these are not the searches that lead people TO Offbeat Bride — these are the searches people do once they’re already ON Offbeat Bride.) From the chart above, you can see that despite the fact that our traffic since 2009 has increased by 20% – 80% each year, the number of on-site searches have gradually declined. I like to think this is because we’ve made it easier to find content on the site without searching, but that may be optimistic of me.
Anyway, here are the top 20 search terms people have used when searching on Offbeat Bride:
Popular web queries all time |
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It’s fun to break the search terms into categories like logistics (invitations, vows, readings, music), identities (lesbian, steampunk, rockabilly) and themes (peacock, halloween, vintage). Also, I feel like I should code some sort of algorithm from this list to automagically produce Offbeat Bride posts. It would probably save my editors a lot of time.
I think the clickable tags are so clear that people can just click through those rather than using the search bar.
Do you have data (or anyway of getting data) about how much people click tags and which of those are the most popular?
You know I do! These are the most frequently viewed tag archives over the past year:
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/readings
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/invitation-wording
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/rockabilly-wedding
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/hippie-wedding
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/non-diamond-ring
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/goth-wedding
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/conflict-resolution
http://offbeatbride.com/tag/retro-wedding
I second Mich – I use the tags to click through way more often than I search.
This is SO fucking gratifying to hear! We put an enormous amount of editorial effort into our tag archives, and many readers don’t notice that tags exist — so it’s wonderful to know that they’re being used. 🙂
I use the tags too (although I’m merely an offbeat bride lurker) and I also use the clickable links to past articles that deal with something related. Those take me on a rabbit hole of clicking and reading.
I agree… I use the tags all the time, and when I do search, it’s often just to find the appropriate tag categories!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NG0oaZNmzc
Just the other day I searched for an invitation post, just so I could click on the tag 😛
Wow if I were somebody who sold invitations, I would be beating a path to OffbeatBride’s door.
OK RIGHT?! These guys are smart: http://offbeatbride.com/filed/shop/ads/invite-designers
uh, yeah…when this landed in my inbox I said:
‘whoa.’
Then I scrolled through some of the links after hitting ‘invitations’ and got to the post about favorite OBB reader invites from Minted…I was always worried I was maybe too ‘Offbeat Lite’ for OBB readers. Not so.
Hang on Ariel, I’m gathering up my sofa change and going through my coat pockets and will be contacting you shortly.
Did you get a haircut Ariel?? It looks gorgeous.
Thank you, I did indeed! I didn’t think anyone would notice, but it came up in the comments over here. 🙂
The number of “halloween” searches simply thrills me. Also: thank you for being so open with the data you share. It’s fantastic nerd-reading.
You’re so welcome. I love dorking out on data, and it’s always more fun to do it together!
Any insight into the peak shape “trend”? It appears that searches skyrocket at a certain point in the year (maybe Jan-Feb?) then slowly decline?
I love these data posts….such a data nerd…..
Even though Offbeat Bride is about nontraditional weddings, we’re still influenced by the more traditional wedding industry timeline — that means a spike during the “engagement season” (Jan – Feb), then solid traffic through July, and then a gentle decline for the rest of the year.
Our traffic patterns are less dramatic than, say, theknot.com (their traffic very much reflects the wedding industry’s annual flux) but we still see a Jan/Feb spike.
I usually browse on my iPhone and I find it hard to search for topics from there – i generally go to google and type what ever I’m looking for and just add offbeat bride. Then again, maybe there is a totally user friendly iPhone search function and i just cant find it…..
With the new mobile templates the search is there in the sidebar — which appears at the *end* of every page. (Since there’s not room to show the sidebar to the side, it wraps beneath the post.)
Then again, searching Google for offbeat bride [whatever] totally works too.