by Debbi | May 12, 2008 | Web/Tech
The blog fell short of my goals last month.
At the beginning of the year I talked about how one of my goals for 2008 was to increase the blog visits each month. Even if it was by a tiny amount- one month saw an increase of just four visits over the previous month- I was thrilled.
March, however, was a whole different animal because of St. Patrick’s Day. Internet searchers were looking for all sorts of things related to the holiday, and our obsession with floats and parades led a lot of people here who probably weren’t really interested in The Sandbar.
Since April doesn’t have a theme holiday that we can turn into a costume party, we didn’t have quite as many visitors. But that’s okay.
There were 836 visits to the Sandbar blog last month, for an average of almost 28 visits per day. And if you’re keeping track (I know, I’m really the only one doing that), that’s a whole three more visits over the month before the craziness of March. Like I said- any increase, no matter how small, is fine with me.
The usual searches continue to bring people here: Landshark Lager stuff, hurricane stuff, mermaid stuff, and Sandbar stuff.
KU’s basketball championship generated some interest; most people were looking for t-shirts and things like that, but one guy was looking for "topless girls at the ku jayhawks celebration." Not sure why he ended up on the Sandbar blog. He was searching from a UCLA computer. I’m not kidding.
Some of my other favorites from last month:
- scooter San Antonio drunk driving ride home (not a good idea,see this post)
- unpaid ticket jail (someone must have been looking for Morgan.)
- facts about pants (pants like jeans or pants like Brother?)
- what kind of shirt goes with mermaid skirt? (none. they’re supposed to be topless.)
- San Antonio legs contest Wednesday (alright, we’re going to do the best legs contest here, soon, I promise.)
And that’s it for April.
by Debbi | Apr 16, 2008 | Web/Tech
March was a banner month for so many reasons, and especially for this blog.
The blog recorded its highest number of hits in a month with 1,006. We’re still on track with our goal of increasing the blog visits every month in 2008. I was also happy to see that our MySpace friends are finally linking up to the blog through both our bulletins and the blog page.
St. Patrick’s Day, not surprisingly, contributed to the blog traffic last month. Lots of people were searching for ideas for St. Patrick’s Day floats, information about this year’s St. Patrick’s Day controversy, and St. Patrick’s Day happenings in various places like Schooner Wharf, the Sandbar in Arizona, and even Marysville, Missouri. A few internet researchers were even specifically interested in The Sandbar’s floats!
Jimmy Buffett’s new Landshark Lager beer is proving to be a popular internet topic, and thanks to our numerous mentions of it, internet traffic is headed our way. People are still looking for Landshark Lager merchandise, clothing, promotions, and even MySpace pictures.
Of course, mermaids and hurricanes are still popular internet search terms that send people to The Sandbar. The always-popular "what happens during a hurricane" search still appears, but this month someone also wanted to know "what ELSE happens during a hurricane." I’m still amazed at the number of people looking for topless mermaids on the internet, but mermaid wall decor is apparently equally popular.
Drink searches were big last month, most notably for the Shark Attack. I wonder if these searches were done by the Joe’s Crab Shack researchers? I bet they were also the ones searching for vinyl sharks.
And, lots of searches for people. Someone out there was looking for Garreth and Toland, another was looking for Jimmy Buffett’s favorite bar. Someone else was looking for Pat Mushrush, and even Justin Kogl is being stalked on the internet. A couple searches for Gayle Sayers led people to our blog. Somebody else just wanted to find "famous person." I guess something on our blog qualified.
Here are some of my favorite internet searches that led folks to The Sandbar last month:
Hurricane foosball: Because regular foosball in a bar just isn’t hard enough?
Sandbar nudity: Thanks to those topless mermaids, we get the people looking for nudity now.
How can I change into a mermaid: Dance on our bar with a green sequined dress.
I wonder what the word for dots looks like in braille: Dammit, Joe Factor and your favorite quote.
Song…I asked the man behind the bar: Not sure what this was about, but I thought it was funny.
Indoor bounce house sales statistics: Thanks to Joe, we’re now getting all the freaky internet referrals.
Carry on, internet friends. Let’s see what the wackiest internet search leading to The Sandbar will be next month.
by Debbi | Apr 1, 2008 | Web/Tech
If you’re reading this, then you’re probably a regular reader here. I try to make sure that everything new, fun, and exciting about The Sandbar, along with a good mix of anecdotes from our past, are here for the readers.
Did you know that we also maintain an e-mail list of fans? Once a month, I send out an email to the subscribers with news about upcoming specials, updates, and events.
If you aren’t getting this monthly email and you would like to, send us an email. There’s an email link on the top right side of this page. Include your name and your email address, and I’ll add you to the list.
by Debbi | Mar 9, 2008 | Web/Tech
I’d like to re-categorize the categories on this blog.
There’s a "comment cloud" in the sidebar that lists all the categories, and you can click on any of those links to see all the posts in that category. Some posts are dumped into more than one category. But, I’m starting to wonder if those categories are too broad and/or vague?
For example, there’s a category for "Holidays." But at The Sandbar, we have a lot of holidays. A lot. New Year’s Eve, Christmas, Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, and then the random Labor Days and Martin Luther King Days that people choose to turn into a drinking holiday. Should there be a separate category for each of the big holidays? And leave the less vigorously celebrated holidays in the Holiday category?
Another one that is becoming more confusing one to me is "Stories." Most of these are double, or even triple, categorized; this makes me wonder if a category called "Stories" is even relevant. Because, really, practically everything is a story.
And then there’s "People." I was thinking about splitting this one into a category for people and a category for staff. I think this category actually started out called "staff." Should "Famous People" have their own category?
What do you the readers think? Do you even use the categories? Do you ever read the past entries or just the newest one? I’m asking for advice, and I don’t do that often, so take advantage of it.
by Debbi | Mar 4, 2008 | Web/Tech
February was an interesting month here on the Sandbar blog.
This year I decided to start keeping track of various statistics here, like average visits in a month, total visits for the month, and the funny search words that people use to get here. I’ve talked about this a couple times; last month I told you what happened in January, and more recently when the blog hit a big milestone.
One of my recently-decided goals for 2008 is for visits to this site to increase each month. Even if it’s just by one visit, I’ll be happy. So far, two months into the year, that has happened.
In February, the blog had 833 visits. That’s an average of almost 29 per day! And even more importantly, it’s almost four more per day than in January. A year ago? February of 2007 only managed 439 visits for the entire month.
Once again, the most popular search term that sends people our way is "what happens during a hurricane." But there were lots of other funny hurricane-related searches:
- What happens after a hurricane {the mermaids shake their tailfeathers on the bar}
- Hurricane videos with no swearing {ours is surely the only one out there, doesn’t everybody swear when a hurricane is coming?}
- Pictures of people that drank too many hurricanes {those can’t be pretty}
There were lots of searches about St. Patrick’s Day things:
- St. Patrick’s Day Float Ideas {we can definitely help with that}
- St. Patrick’s Day controversy {to be on the float…or to be at the bar…}
- St. Patrick’s Day obscure fact {we don’t know any of those, not sure why they were directed here.}
And mermaids were a popular search, too:
- Topless mermaids {I created a monster with this post}
- Mermaids with no bra {apparently we’re the go-to source for this}
- About the full moon what happens to mermaids {huh?}
- Various searches about mermaid costume, mermaid wall decor, mermaid painting, and my favorite…
- Scary mermaid picture {see the link above for topless mermaids, that ought to do it.}
Lots of people were searching for Sandbar stuff:
- Sandbar webcam
- Sandbar Lawrence
- Sandbar Ottawa
- Sandbar downtown
- Sandbar wax
And apparently they weren’t always looking for our favorite Sandbars, as people searched for them in other locations too:
- Sandbar Long Beach NY
- Sandbar Costa Rica
- Sandbar in AZ
- Sandbar NYC
- Sandbar London
- Sandbar Clemson
Coconut bras and all things LandShark Lager– merchandise, pictures, video, stuff, apparel, artwork, facts- were popular too. And several people were also looking for Dave. Probably ex-girlfriends.
Here are some of my other favorites from February:
- people making out at the Sandbar in Lawrence {this actually showed up twice!}
- Frank Wiles {is there something you need to tell us? Why are people hunting you?}
- bars just outside of Columbia, MO
- photo op cut outs
- Tippy cup shirts
- Jayhawk panty
- pictures of Go Sanbar Bug (horse)
I plan to make this a regular feature at the end of every month.
by Debbi | Feb 26, 2008 | Web/Tech
Another milestone for this blog has been reached- 10,000 visitors!
Now, I’m not claiming that they are all "unique" visitors, for all I know it could be the same five people who check out the blog twelve times every day. (And by the way, I have both my desktop PC and my laptop blocked, so my own visits don’t count.) But I still think it’s pretty cool that there have been 10,000 visits. And, I actually like the idea that a lot of it could be repeat visitors. I’d rather have twenty people who visit every day than twenty different people every day. Loyalty is more important to me than numbers.
I was actually online yesterday when it happened- the Sandbar website is our home page, so I clicked over to the blog out of habit and noticed that the count was at 9,998. I didn’t expect it to reach 10,000 yesterday, so I clicked onto the stat counter to see what was going on, and apparently other people were on the blog at the same time I was because by the time I went back to the blog, there had been two more visits.
In fact, yesterday had a huge spike in visits, almost double the daily average. Must be all those people looking for St. Patrick’s day ideas, Landshark Lager, and the ever-popular "what happens during a hurricane."
Oh, and one of those visitors? He/she arrived because they were Googling "people making out at the sandbar in lawrence." And that was the second time in one day that particular search term had been used.
At the end of the month, I’ll have a list for you of all the funny search terms that people use to end up at The Sandbar, but I just couldn’t wait to share that one.
