WordPress gives you access to some interesting tools and statistics about your blog. For example, this blog has clocked up nearly 1,500 total views since I migrated it to the WordPress platform last year. I can see which links people have clicked, both from the blog to get to other places and on other web pages to get here (hello Lancaster Archive Forum!). Most interestingly, though, it also gives me a list showing the search terms that people have used to find me (numbers show how many hits came from each term):
Some are interesting:
- dinas dinlle world war (11)
- air traffic control tower dinas dinlle north wales (1)
- llandwrog caernarfon raf training in the war (1)
- llandwrog airfield wartime (2)
- avro lancaster outline (2)
- gil thew (2)
- tail end charlie fradley raf (2)
- adam purcell (1)
- jack purcell family (1)
- lancaster bomber elsham crash site (1)
- avro lancaster line drawings (1)
- a painting of a lancaster avro in a field (1)
- fradley airodrome during the war (1)
- lancaster bomber crews 467 (1)
- jude findlay and adam purcell (1)
Some probably didn’t quite find what was being searched for:
- lancaster jb467 (4)
- old rcaf airfields firestation (2)
- wartime bomb shelters in scotland (2)
- 102 squadron pocklington (2)
- “102 squadron” (2)
- wartime fire service models (1)
- canberra bomber navigator station (1)
- wartime fire service stations (1)
- photos binbrook dispersal apron (1)
- air traffic control dinas dinlle (1)
- lancaster lm550 (1)
- sir arthur harris raf gravestone (1)
- roger audis of 9 squadron (1)
- very big canvas (1)
Some are just plain strange:
- raf bardney ghosts (2)
- irish sea paintings (1)
- how to canvas something (1)
- is the control tower raf bardney haunted (1)
- are jack purcells still cool? (1)
- repainting jack purcell (1)
But every so often comes one which makes me sit up and take
notice:
- ken tabor (2)
- ” lille raid “+ smith (2)
- lm475 purcell (1)
- navy veteran dale johnston (1)
- don smith 463 squadron (1)
- who was eric hill born to (1)
- search for dale johnston (1)
- charles erskine johnston (1)
It’s this last group that gets me a little excited. Sure, there could be many ‘Dale Johnstons’ and ‘Eric Hills’ in the world. But from these searches, someone is looking for people of that name. Could they be the same ones that I’m looking for?
The lack of any comments or emails suggests maybe not. But I’ll keep hoping. And if you are one of the people who find this blog through a search engine while looking for someone, please leave me a comment. You never know where a connection might be.
© 2011 Adam Purcell
Something Very Big 