Google searches that lead to my site

I stopped using Google Analytics when I redesigned my site. I track my own statistics. This gives me access to raw data, and I can do my own analyses.

I wanted to know the keywords on Google that led to my site. (Google Analytics only gives you phrases.) I also wanted independent words. If you search for “Calvin and Hobbes”, I want to count only “Calvin”, knowing that it’s in the context of “Hobbes”.

So I did this analysis. Here are the keywords that lead to my site. (This is based on 3 weeks of data).

1. excel in the context of cell, formula, function, leading to my Excel tips. People mostly want to know how to remove errors like #N/A.
2. calvin in the context of hobbes, fight, club. (There was a great article on how Fight Club is really Calvin and Hobbes.) Most of these queries are searches for specific quotes, and I’ve typed out all the Calvin and Hobbes quotes.
3. indian in the context of torrents, tv. One of my most popular posts is Indian Torrents. I simply linked to a couple of Google searches, so it’s popularity is unjustified.
4. tamil in the context of songs, lyrics, movie. This is mostly thanks to the recent tamil quizzes I’ve put up.
5. mumbai in the context of local, schedule, train. A shockingly large number of people search for Mumbai bus and train schedule, landing on my link to the IIT-B Mumbai Navigator.
6. anand in the context of s anand, bcg, infosys. This is people searching for me.
7. irr in the calculating, excel, formula. Calculating IRR turned out to be another unexpectedly popular post.
8. interview in the context of lehman brothers, bcg, landing at some of my interview experiences.
9. mckinsey in the context of ppt, presentation. Most of these people are looking for presentations, while I have a link to the McKinsey pre-placement talk at LBS. Interesting that BCG is not on the top 10.
10. google in the context of engedu, types, authors@google. Though I have several posts about Google, the ones about Google video like Meet the author and on Google TechTalks are the most popular.

Having read the actual queries, I’ve concluded that only the keywords excel, mumbai, anand, irr and interview definitely lead to relevant hits. The rest are debatable. Maybe I should reduce the importance of the less relevant posts on my sitemaps file.