Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Top Search Terms Driving Traffic to this Blog

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What are the top search terms driving traffic to this blog from search engines this month? This is possible to find out at Alexa. Some were expected, others turned out to be rather unexpected. This is the top-ten terms that directs people from the search engines to this blog (the list is updated monthly):

#1 devils bible
#2 devil's bible
#3 codex gigas
#4 the devils bible
#5 the devil's bible
#6 misquoting jesus
#7 alexandrian witnesses
#8 maurice robinson
#9 evangelical textual criticism
#10 peter head textual

The devil's bible or Codex gigas keeps driving traffic to this blog, and so is the "misquoting Jesus"-issue. Many will have read Peter William's extensive review of Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, his interview with Ehrman and some subsequent thoughts on the topic. Today I noticed an an on-line lecture by William's from 2006 offering an analysis of the book. (The talk starts a while into the soundfile after some chatting.)

Maurice Robinson is the "most wanted" ETC blogger, slightly less popular than the Alexandrian witnesses :-). I am sure Peter Head likes the idea that people connects him with "textual" (which is probably "textual criticism" - there seem to be a three-word limit to this data).

4 comments

  1. My initial amazement that I should rank at all within the Top 10 (David Letterman take note!) is somewhat dampened by the fact that four entries with "devil" in them rank significantly higher than either myself or Peter Head. Something needs to be done about that...

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  2. Part of the problem is one of word frequency. "Peter Head" produced one dead-end link to Tyndale House on hit #9 and only one more in the top 50 that would even lead to Peter M. Head. "Maurice Robinson," however, leads directly to this blog on only the 3rd hit.

    "Peter M. Head," on the other hand, leads to Tyndale House right away and this blog directly thereafter.

    The problem, therefore, is that Peter's middle initial is not closely enough tied to his identity as a textual critic. Adopting the nom de plume of "Peter de Vil" and forgetting the middle initial should take care of the problem ("Devil Head" would only distract would-be textual critics with fantasies of a ski vacation in Wisconsin).

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  3. Thanks White Man, that's a comfort :-)

    I also tried out a search for "Maurice Robinson" on Google from my computer in Sweden and I got:

    www.mauricerobinsonsports.co.uk
    www.mauricerobinson.com/
    www.mauricerobinson.com/about/about.html
    www.bokus.com/b/9781435714700.htm

    and on fifth place an interview with our Maurice on this blog.

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  4. It just shows how important the "M" is - every letter is important.

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