Vanessa Fox. Nude.

I have been crazy busy with lots of things to write about but no time to write them.

In the meantime, check out this LA Times story on using the internet to broadcast details of our personal lives that we previously reserved for friends and family (specifically, using Twitter to document the Yahoo! layoff). Obviously, this topic hits close to home for me. I’ve been talking to people online for more than 10 years, I’ve blogged about my career changes, and I dug into the question of online identity at Gnomedex last year. I talked with the reporter about how we lose privacy but gain a sense of connecting with the world around us when we post online.

On a completely different topic related to the world continuing to move online, my latest article for Information Today magazine is up and focuses on the recent PEW Internet study that found that 77% of Americans are online and most turn to the internet for answers.

If you’re more into talking and listening than reading, head over to Search Marketing Expo West next week in Santa Clara! I’m moderating seven sessions: four on blended/ universal search, and three “wonder twins” sessions: blogging, social media marketing, and user-generated content. (Speaking of universal search, did you see the SEOmoz whiteboard Friday I did about it not too long ago?)

And if you’re more into listening and not traveling beyond your couch and laptop, check out the webinar I’m doing March 11th on how companies can successfully engage with customers using social networking.

Hope to see you all next week!

This is a post in two parts. First, a few words about marketing, and then, an answer, once and for all about Washington state’s primary and/or caucus situation. A couple of days ago, I mentioned that a great search engine optimization tactic is to provide useful information about what searchers are looking for. I know, it seems obvious, but it’s so simple that I think it can sometimes be overlooked. I noted that I did a search to find out the primary schedule for each state and I didn’t find a good result until #13. I suggested that political sites (candidates, activist groups, news organizations…) should figure out what their core audience might want to know and then create content for it. I gave a few examples in an article I did over at Search Engine Land about the use of the internet in this year’s election season.

I asked several other questions (about environmental issues, the war in Iraq, the economy) and official candidate sites weren’t returned on the first page for any of them. Candidate sites could be well served by a page that talks about the details of each major issue and how the candidate leans.

And proof that it works, my blog post about the primary schedule now ranks #1 for my original query, as well as for queries like “what is the difference in primary or caucus states”, “primary in each state”, and “when is each primary”.

One of the questions I asked in the original post was about the difference between a primary and a caucus and why Washington state has both. Suzan LeVine has put together a wonderfully comprehensive (and non-partisan) write up that she has titled “Caucuses For Dummies”. I’m copying her article with minimal edits below since I find the whole topic fascinating and I think a lot of other Washington voters are as confused as I was.

Caucus For Dummies: A Non-Partisan Primer On The Washington State Presidential Caucus and Primary By A Pre-First Timer
By Suzi LeVine

Key Messages

1. If you’re a Democrat – the primary means nothing. In fact, I think I will let my 5 yr old practice staying in the lines by filling in circles and playing “voting” on my absentee primary ballot. The Republican primary has 51% usefulness for delegates (see below for more details on this).
2. To find your caucus
• If you’re a Democrat: use the caucus finder or search for Washington State caucus
• If you’re a Republican: All counties are listed here; King county has a specific tool.
3. The caucuses are at 1pm on Saturday, February 9th and our delegates will really matter in this election!

I have never been or participated in a caucus before. This year, however, I’m more inspired than ever to have input into this system (if you don’t vote, you can’t complain). However, I had a hard time finding the information that would help me. So – I started asking some questions and digging up information for myself and also to share with you – with the goal to help more people have a voice in this election.

Q: Since our caucus is on Feb 9th – after Super Tuesday – will it even matter?
A: Quite possibly. We don’t know how Super Tuesday will turn out – so it’s best to be prepared to attend and participate in the Washington Caucus. We could be at a place where every delegate counts. Also – after Super Tuesday, less viable candidates’ delegates may be in play - so – our delegates will still be valuable. Plus – what a cool way to fulfill your civic duty!

Edit from Vanessa: Turns out, our votes count even after Super Tuesday!

Q: If Washington State has a caucus, then what’s all this I hear about a primary?
A: It’s crazy, but in fact, Washington State has BOTH a caucus (on Feb 9th) AND a primary (on Feb 19th). BIG WARNING!!!! Don’t be fooled by the primary (especially since absentee ballots will be distributed on or around Jan. 30th). The caucus is first and has more impact on who the people of Washington select for their presidential candidates than the primary. Here are some specifics to be aware of:

• Democrats select 100% of their delegates to the national convention based on the caucuses – even though there is a primary ballot for Democrats.
• Republicans will allocate 51% of their delegates based on the primary results and 49% based on the caucus results.
• An individual can vote/be represented in both the caucus and the primary – as long as they stay in one party for both (I could be counted in the caucus AND vote in the primary).
• The full text of info about the primary from the secretary of state is here as a PDF.

In other words – if you’re a Democrat – your primary ballot for president doesn’t really matter that much. If you’re a Republican, it does. Either way – you should still go to your local caucus.

Q: What is the timing for the caucus?
A: 1pm is the latest you should arrive. The first ½ hour is when folks get registered and acquainted and when they start chatting. 1:30pm is when nominating can begin.

Q: What is the experience/what happens at a caucus?
A: Again – while I’ve never been, I’ve spoken with a few folks who have and it sounds nutty but fun (kind of like a Snickers bar). Here is what I understand the main steps to be:

1. In advance of the caucus – find out what your precinct is and where your precinct will be caucusing (see the question about this below for how to do this).
2. Sat. afternoon, Feb 9th – you go to that location, walk in and sign-in (again – getting there by 1pm).
3. You gather by precinct and do some schmoozing and discussing.
4. At 1:30 – sub-groups will form around the candidates and a person will be selected from among each candidate group to speak to the larger precinct about that candidate.
5. Each candidate group will get to speak and, at some point, the Precinct Chair will ask people to align by candidate. People then shuffle around to where they are putting their support.
6. There may be additional speaking and deliberation.
7. If a candidate doesn’t have that much support – there may be some jockeying for those people by the other candidates.
8. At some point (not predetermined) – the Precinct chair will finalize the results, take a headcount and, based on the percentage breakout, distribute the delegates that have been allocated to that precinct based on population of the precinct (not based on caucus attendance). For example, let’s say a precinct has 1000 residents in it – it may have 10 delegates allocated against it. In the caucus, if there are 100 people who show up and 40 of them support candidate A, 40% candidate B and 20% candidate c, then candidate A will get 4 delegates, B will get 4 delegates and C will get 2 delegates.
9. Feb 9th is actually just the first round of delegate voting – but should be reflective of the final outcome of the state caucuses. The precinct elected delegates (they are chosen by the group at the caucus) then go to a district, county and then state caucus – with the final caucus selecting the delegates who go to the national convention.

Q: How do I know where my caucus is and what my precinct number is?
A: Your precinct number is on your voter registration card. However, your voter location IS NOT necessarily your caucus location. Use the tools listed below to find out your precinct number (if you don’t have your voter registration card) and/or to find out the caucus location.

• Tool on the Democrat site: 90% of registered Democrat voters will find their info there; the other 10% should call the number on that page.
• Tool on the Republican site: All counties are listed there; King county has a specific tool.

Q: Can kids come?
A: Kids are allowed to come (they won’t count toward the total unless their going to be 18 by the election in November). OR – of course- you could find childcare.

Q: Do I have to have an ID?
A: I’m still trying to determine that. I don’t think so, but it’s safer to bring it – even if it’s your drivers license, voter registration id, etc…

Edit from Vanessa: Looks like you don’t need ID.

Q: Do I have to already be a registered voter?
A: NO – you can register to vote at the caucuses – as long as you’ll be 18 by the November election.

Q: Do I already need to be registered for a particular party? Or – if I already am, can I only participate in their caucus?
A: While you will need to choose a party (or stick with the one you’ve chosen), even if you are registered for a particular party already, you can change your allegiance for the day (although you can’t participate in both caucuses on the same day).

Q: What if I’m religious and don’t write on Shabbat? How do I register to participate in the caucuses?
A: The only writing that I could ascertain is the signature when you register. SO – in theory, you could show up and still present arguments and participate in it in that capacity. There is a form to fill out so that you can have a proxy in the actual process. I couldn’t find the one on the Republican’s website, but here’s the one for Democrats. However, this needed to be submitted by Feb 1st to actually count!

Q: How do I get selected as a delegate?
A: It is done during the caucus process based on who has the cleanest teeth. (LOL) Seriously, the people in a particular group for a candidate select their delegates from among that group.

Q: What are the dates for subsequent district/state/national gatherings?
A: April 5th is the next one. More info can be found on the respective sites – listed below.

For more information:

• Democrats – Washington State Democrats Caucus information center
• Republicans – King County Republican Frequently Asked Questions

Seattlist also has a great post about the subject.

The thing about Feedburner subscriber numbers is that Feedburner has to rely on the feed readers to report accurate numbers. If a reader doesn’t report or reports incorrectly, then the whole Feedburner stat is thrown off. In reality, subscriber numbers are even less useful to track than page views (my in-depth review of how Feedburner reports numbers on Search Engine Land explains why reach (the number of people reading your feed each day) is a better indicator of audience engagement than subscribers (for instance, since the total subscriber number includes those who subscribed but never read and those who subscribed on one service, then switched services and subscribed again).

Feedburner could make it easier. They could have handy historical charts for reach like they do for total subscriber numbers. Not that it would do that much good. We would continue to measure subscriptions like we do page views — more is better! Even if it’s not.

That the total Feedburner number is made up of lots of individual services with their own quirks makes measurement difficult as well. I would love to be able to see historical charts by service, to make it easy to pinpoint anomalies within trends. For instance, when Google Reader doesn’t report numbers one day, that’s not obvious from the overall count, but is when you compare subscriber numbers by service by day. But the only way to do that is to click through to each day and look at the pie charts. Or if you’re super geeky, you might manually put all the numbers into a spreadsheet.

Take this week. My total number went from 1279 on Monday to 1450 on Thursday. Just looking at the overall numbers, it looks like my subscriber base was steadily growing:

But then, Friday’s numbers dropped down to 1321.

What happened?

The only way to tell is to dive into each day’s numbers. Compare Monday:

to Tuesday:

Everything looks about the same except that my Netvibes subscribers went from 181 to 305. (This was around the same time they released their newest version in private beta.) This new Netvibes number stayed pretty constant on Wednesday and Thursday, but on Friday, dropped back down to 182.

Who knows what happened. Maybe Netvibes was double counting those users who moved to the new private beta (counting both their old accounts and new accounts)? Maybe upgrading their database just caused a glitch. In any case, it appears that the anomaly has been corrected.

Of course, this same type thing will happen (without correction) anytime a new service opens. People who previously had subscriptions on other services will try the new one, causing double counts. Which is part of why Rick Klau is right about reach being a better indicator of reader engagement. Although my total subscriber count went down yesterday, my reach number was way up (likely thanks to the fact that I actually wrote something for people to read).

Did anyone else notice a bump in subscribers then a subsequent dip this week? Or am I the only obsessed one?

You Twitter haters can say what you want about it, but it surely is helping fulfill the early promise of the web to make the world smaller.

Yesterday, I asked (via Twitter) about everyone’s favorite Mexican food appetizer, as I was making chicken enchiladas for Buffy night and wanted input on what to serve with that. Within 10 minutes, I had nearly 15 replies. The verdict? Chips and salsa are big favorites, as is guacamole, queso, and the traditional appetizer, everyone’s favorite: tequila. (So, of course, I had to make them all. Well, I didn’t actually make tequila. I didn’t have any agave plants handy.)

Speaking of Twitter’s usefulness, I also learned that today that Britney Spears lost custody of her kids. If not for Twitter, I would have such more limited knowledge about the world around me.

Yesterday, Natala Menezes (@natala) from Microsoft adCenter joined me on GoodKarma on Webmaster Radio. You can download the podcast or just click play below.

Webmaster Radio
Twitter for News Vanessa , along with Natala Menezes from Microsoft AdCenter talks about how she has been reading Twitter to find out the news of the day , and she discusses the Best 5 Twitter Services You Might Not Know Show Host: Vanessa Fox Show: GoodKarma Channel: Internet Marketing

We talked about all things Twitter and took questions and comments from both the chatroom and (fittingly) Twitter. Thanks to everyone who chimed in and sent us @ tweets.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a microblogging platform that Natala describes as “social text messaging”. You send out short messages (via SMS, IM, web, or a third-party app) about what you’re doing, what you’re wondering about, maybe a question that you have, and anyone “following” you gets the updates in any one of a number of ways. (For instance, you can add an app in Facebook that causes your Twitter updates to show up there.) You can also track particular keywords (for instance, you can get twitters from anyone talking about your brand).

For more details about Twitter and how to use it, see Chris Brogan’s Newbie’s Guide to Twitter and Caroline Middlebrook’s Twitter Guide.

In short:

1. Create a Twitter account.
2. Find some people to follow (your friends, bloggers you find interesting, maybe me…). You can find people on Twitter by searching for them, by looking at someone’s profile and skimming their followers list, or by finding profile links on bloggers’ home pages.
3. Decide whether you want to get Twitters to your phone, via IM, or if you want to skim them via the web interface. You can choose this for each person you follow. You may find, for instance, that you want to get Twitters from friends on your phone, but Twitters from those in an industry you’re interested in professionally via the web interface.
4. Start twittering!
5. Make sure people can find you. Add a link to your Twitter profile on your blog, or add the Twitter widget that shows your latest status (see mine in the lower left of my right sidebar).

How is it useful to search marketers?
You can use Twitter for search marketing in several ways. An obvious one is reputation management. There’s a lot on the web about me competing for first page ranking on a search for my name, but somehow, my Twitter profile comes in at number ten. Natala’s Twitter profile ranks number four for her name on Live Search.

Individual Twitter statuses can rank as well. You might write a short blurb about a particularly interesting blog post you wrote or new product page on your ecommerce site for an opportunity to rank in addition to the page itself.

And Twitters can drive traffic. You have to be careful about this. Many people, for instance, have unsubscribed from Guy Kawasaki’s twitters because they feel he simply spams his followers with links all the time. If you use WordPress, you can install a plugin that automatically Twitters links to new blog posts, but be cautious with this. Michael Gray (@graywolf) does this, but that’s not all he Twitters. He also updates with lots of other interesting information and thoughts. Search Engine Land (@sengineland) does this as well, but they are strictly a news site, so the assumption is that anyone following Search Engine Land on Twitter is expecting notifications of new stories. I occasionally Twitter about new blog posts (I’ll likely Twitter this one), but I really only do this when I write something that I think might be of extra interest. Otherwise, I Twitter about needing more coffee.

I have found that when I post a link on Twitter, I get a good amount of referral traffic, so people do click on them.



On the show, Natala pointed out that she gets Twitters on her phone, and it’s often not convenient for her to click links. I only get a few Twitters on my phone. I mostly scan the web interface, where it’s easier to click links, although if I get a link on my phone that seems particularly interesting, I’ll save the text message so I can look it up later.

How is it useful for brands?
Todd Friesen (@oilman) wondered if Twitter could ever become a really useful marketing tool. Brands can use Twitter in a number of ways. If nothing else, you can use it to track conversations about you. Natala, for instance, mentioned that she often Twitters about Alaska Airlines, as she flies a lot (I have no idea what that’s like; heh). Alaska could track mentions of them to see what people are saying - if they’re having good or bad experiences and how discussions about those experiences are impacting brand perception. Rick Klau (@rklau) of Feedburner tracks mentions of his product and Twitters back answers to questions that people have.

You can easily track a keyword by texting or IMing “track + keyword” to Twitter (for instance track feedburner). If you want to track over the web, you can use Terraminds to search Twitter for your keywords, then subscribe to the RSS feed of that search.

Brands like Jet Blue (among others) use Twitter to offer exclusive promotions and sales. Drive, a short-lived TV show, Twittered details about show production during airtime to generate interest.

You can also use Twitter as part of your overall community engagement strategy. Get involved in the conversation. Become part of the community. If it’s true that we can’t actively engage with more than 200 people, then Twitter is a great way to get connected to that 200, who each are connected to another 200, who each are… Well, you know.

Susan Reynold’s recent frozen peas campaign in support of the American Cancer Society is a great example of how Twitter can virally spread a message. As is Greg Boser’s recent Twitter “joke” at Pubcon.

How is it useful for personal social interaction?
Many people use Twitter to stay in touch with their friends. For instance, you might Twitter that you’re thinking of heading out to a local bar for a drink and is anyone around to join you? At the airport last night, Natala Twittered a question about the weather in Seattle (we were about to fly back) and she got at least four responses in around 10 minutes.

How is it useful for current events?
On the show, we talked about the recent death of the ex-Prime Minister in Pakistan (actually, we mispoke and said the Prime Minister and in short order, got a Twitter from Deepak Singh (@mndoci) correcting us!). Natala said she first heard the news via Twitter. Current Buzz talks about how journalists aren’t allowed into the country and have found it difficult to get accurate details, but a dentist inside Pakistan has been Twittering as “teeth” with the latest news.

I learned about the latest earthquake in San Francisco from Twitter. And I often get news I wouldn’t otherwise see from Twitter.

How do you balance personal and professional tweets?
Several people asked this question during the show including @SEMaven. This is a hard question (the same question could be asked of any kind of online interaction, such as blogging and forum participation). I think it really depends on the person and the situation. How separate to you want to keep your personal and professional life? Are you representing a large brand or yourself? If you’re representing a large brand, you want to come across as authentic, but you probably want a separate personal account.

Stuart Maxwell (@stumax) asked “what should I tweet?” Are some updates too personal? If you choose to maintain one account for both professional and personal use, you may seem more genuine, but you also have to be aware of how noisy your Twitters might come across. For instance, if you send a lot of personal replies to friends, those who are following you for industry news might unsubscribe. Michael Gray recommends that no more than 20% of your Twitters be off topic.

What addons exist for Twitter?
An Bui (@anwith1n) wondered what the most useful third party apps for Twitter are. You can use a number of third-party apps for posting and reading Twitters. If you’re a visual person, you might like Twitter blocks, which graphically shows you updates and Twitter “neighborhoods”. In addition to receiving updates via the web, SMS, or IM, you can also Twitter from Outlook, your Blackberry, your iPod, or a standalone client, such as Twitteriffic (for Mac) or Snitter (for either Mac or PC).

You can use Hashtags to tag your Twitters with an event tag, much like people tag pictures of events on Flickr. Twitter Hacks has the latest Twitter tricks.

Tweeterboard shows you the top 100 Twitterers and gives you stats on about 2600 people. How is this useful? If you’re a top Twitter, you become more visible and can gain more followers. And you can use the stats to find out who is most influential for your niche as guidance for who to reach out to. Jeremiah Owyang has some tips on becoming more popular on Twitter. Be interesting and useful. Make your Twitter profile visible on places like Facebook and your blog. Follow others. Ask lots of questions. Reply to people. Basically, get actively involved.

Use Terraminds to set up an RSS feed that alerts you when people are talking about your brand and keywords you’re interested in.

You can use a Twitter widget to display your latest updates on your blog (see mine in the lower right sidebar) and can use a plugin to automatically update Twitter with your latest blog posts. CShel, in the chatroom, recommended Alex King’s WordPress plugins for Twitter.

What’s the best way to manage being connected/not connected? Is it rude to check your twitters during Christmas dinner?
Marc Levin (@dogballs) wanted to know how to check your Twitters at the dinner table without being yelled at. I used to only read Twitter on the web, but I’ve started getting Twitters on my phone lately, and to be honest, I really sort of like it. Here are my tips:

• You don’t have to subscribe to everyone via phone or IM. I set all direct messages to be sent to my phone (direct messages go only to you, rather than to everyone) and all Twitters that are replies to me (I do this by tracking my username). I also have a few friends set to go to my phone. I read everything else on the web.
• You can set Twitters to go to your phone only certain times of day. I, for instance, have them turned off at night, so I can sleep. If you’re on your computer during the day and get Twitters more easily there, you could have the phone option turned off during those hours.

As for Twittering during Christmas dinner? That probably depends on how tolerant your family is of your technology addiction in general. I tend to text and email a lot, but I’ve been trying to cut back lately. I might need a technology patch.

How mainstream is Twitter?
Well, Natala’s mom is on it, but she’s pretty hip. Twitter was a key plot element in a recent episode of CSI, so it’s definitely gaining in popularity. Even though it may not have millions of users yet, enough influencers use it who will see interesting tidbits and blog about them for their readers that you can definitely reach a large audience with it, albeit sometimes indirectly. For instance, going back to the Jet Blue example, only 555 people are following those Twitters, but some of those 555 are likely travel bloggers who post about the more interesting deals.

More questions?

• What’s the difference between a direct message and a reply? A direct message is like email — it goes only to the person you send it to. You can do this by texting or IMing “d” + the person’s username or by accessing that person via the web interface and clicking “message”. You reply to someone by sending a Twitter that includes “@”, followed by the person’s username. This message can be seen by anyone, but shows up on the person’s Replies tab.
• But how can I follow you? Great question! Just go to my profile and click “follow”!
• Do I have to get Scoble’s updates to my phone? It’s true that I don’t follow Robert Scoble, and yet I often randomly get his Twitter updates on my phone. I don’t get all of them, just a sporatic sampling. I have no idea why. No else I’ve talked to has a Twitter account with default Scoble enabled, so you can likely choose whether or not to add him yourself.

First it was the Jeeves, the Ask Butler. He was all sweet and helpful with his pinstriping and his red tie, and yet ask.com encased him in carbonite and he was never heard from again.

And now the Ask-powered Bloglines plumber is MIA.

Sure, he always seemed confused and not quite sure what the tools in his hands were for, but he had that cute hat and you couldn’t help but like him even though you had no confidence he could do anything other than look under your sink and shake his head in sympathy and you would have to assure him that it was OK. You didn’t really need running water anyway, and would he like for you to bake him a cookie?

Now when you go to bloglines.com, you just see crazy bouncing colored balls that send mixed messages of “no feeds for you!” and “90s dance party for teens!”

Maybe the plumber has given up the pipe wrench and soldering gun and decided to try his hand at something more well-suited for him, like checkers. But someone might check the local carbonite supply shops and see if any largish orders have been placed lately…

Back online after a brief hiatus and the domain suggestions have just been pouring in as comments, emails, texts, and phone calls. Yes, I completely agree I should spring vanessafox.com, but I’ve been trying to a while now and haven’t gotten very far.

Originally, vanessafox.com was owned by the Vanessa Fox who is a bridesmaid dress designer. Only she let it expire and it was snatched up by someone who started using it as a pornarrific made-for-YPN site. vanessafox.com eventually started targeting ads at bridal fashion (by way of uniquesearch.com), rather than porn.

The designer moved on to a new site, hosted by acuriouslight.com, but that site recently disappeared, although the cache of one of the pages is still available. And you can see the home page on archive.org from May of 2006.
I called the last known number for her NY store and it was out of service.

Curious indeed. I hope the fact that I pushed results featuring her way, way down for searches for our shared name didn’t cause her to go out of business or anything. I wondered what had happened — if she simply let another site expire or if she really was out of the designing business, but funnily enough — it’s difficult to find anything about her when I search. I’m hindering my own quest for knowledge by cluttering up the results with myself.

There should be a name for that — sort of anti-reputation management. When you do a search for something and get back only stuff about yourself or that you’ve written. Accidental ego results.

I will keep going after the domain, and particularly if the designer is no longer designing, a made-for-bridal-ads site might not be as lucrative as before. But fortunately, I have many back up names just in case.

My current favorite is vanessaness.com, suggested by Michael Dorausch. I’m also a fan of thevanessafoxshow.com, suggested by David Payne. I had to snag vanessafrocks.com, which Darren Barefoot thought up, although I have no idea what I’ll do with it. For some reason, I’m a huge fan of another of his ideas, youronlyhope.com, but sadly, it’s taken. Also taken is Larry Hosken’s fantastic rockin-penguins.com, which he notes coincidentally became taken shortly after he suggested it last time. Very shortly.

Other favorites include Charlie’s meetmeatthecrapstable.com, Jefferson Fletcher’s crazylikevanessa.com, Corey’s nessafox.com, and Plin’s vanessafoxage.com (I can always count on Plin to bring on the Buffyage!) Todd is thinking I should go with something more hobo-like, like vanessafoxhobo.com or maybe the hobolife.com.

And then of course, there’s Dave. He is forever my steadfast friend. But vanessafoxnaked.com might be a little too much of a departure. My aunt Brandy suggested vanessafoxnudeandtattoed.com, but I don’t know where she would get an idea like that. Crazy.

I probably won’t be online much the next week or so, so I may be slower than usual responding to emails and things. (Although one good thing about making USA Today and the London Times due to your inability to manage your email effectively is that when you apologize for your poor email response, you can prove that it really isn’t personal! You just are bad at mail!)

The radio silence has nothing to do with anything work related. I’m not working on some secret stealth project that prevents me from making contact with the outside world for fear that someone might use mind reading rays to suck my brain or anything. But stop that already! Mind control is just not polite! Ahem.

Anyway, much like you are treated to lovely music while on hold, I thought I would provide similar entertainment in the form of what I’m ranking for these days. However, unlike some people, this isn’t a blog post where I talk about dirty viagra spammers in an attempt to rank for viagra queries. Not that I know anyone who does that.

So rather than list the entire query, I’ll just list the first part and you can imagine the last word of my domain name appended to it. Below is a select list from the thousands of related queries that bring you all here:

• music
• vanessa without bars
• vanessa without the blur
• july
• you (yes, you!)
• youtube
• your neighborhood
• google (perhaps this was valleywag searching)
• work out videos
• what happens in vegas stays in vegas (for which we are all grateful)
• welding (I have welded before — have so! — and I really don’t recommend this)
• viagra (OK, I admit it. It’s a clever ploy to rank for this after all.)
• unicorn (Ken and Curtis, this one’s for you)
• used car tv models
• road trip
• jumping rope
• facebook
• blackberry
• meta
• networking
• slayers
• social networks
• text messages

And my favorite, “this is why you should never take naked photos”.

(I’m also apparently ranking for wholesale t-shirts. And plastic knife.)

As you might imagine, I’m close to changing my domain name. What do you think I should change it to? If I pick your suggestion, I’ll blog about a topic of your choice, give you full link attribution in the credits section of my about page, and think of you fondly every time I post.

As I mentioned last week, I recently talked with Rick Klau of Feedburner and dug into where all the subscriber numbers come from. From that came my write-up at Search Engine Land about the details of Feedburner subscriber counts. As I said in the article, fluctuations tend to be due to client-based readers (if people don’t turn on their computers one day, they don’t get counted) and occasional non-reporting from a feed reader (I may not notice when My Yahoo doesn’t report my 15 readers but I’ll definitely notice when Google Reader doesn’t report my 513).

Does posting more often help?
This means that new posts shouldn’t impact numbers because the feed readers count subscribers based on actual number subscribed (web-based) and number of requests to see if new posts exist (client-based). Whether or not a new post is there to pull in doesn’t make a difference. (Of course, if you have a new post that people like and link to, that may cause others to find it who then subscribe to your blog, so posts can definitely increase numbers. It’s just that the feed readers themselves don’t count based on whether they actually pull a new post or not.)

Rick said not to fixate on day to day numbers, but instead look at overall trends, so I thought it would be fun to take the opposite of his advice and fixate on the details. Last week, my numbers looked like this:

(Thursday is so low because Google Reader didn’t report numbers that day.)

And for the entire month, pulling out a select group of feed readers, my numbers looked like this:

(Google Desktop and Outlook are client-based, so fluctuate based on whether or not the person turned on the computer and opened the application.)

For the month, my overall subscriber numbers stayed pretty constant, with a slight upward trend. (One interesting thing I noticed that there are two days that Google Reader didn’t report numbers that impacted overall Feedburner numbers (Nov. 3rd and Nov. 8th); but two other days when Google Reader non-reporting didn’t impact overall numbers (Oct 15th and Oct. 29th). Maybe Rick will come by and let us know what was up with that.)

But how many are reading?
Looking at subscriber numbers over time isn’t the same as looking at site visits over time. Subscriber numbers tend to add up. You stop reading my blog, you may not unsubscribe. You might just stop clicking on the site in your RSS reader. You start using Google Reader instead of Bloglines, that old Bloglines subscription continues to be counted. Which means that it’s not all that likely that your subscriber numbers will go down over time. If they stay relatively flat and just creep up a little like mine are doing, you may not be getting new subscribers, so big upward spikes are obviously good.

Reach, however, does tell you how many people are reading your feed on a given day via a feed reader, so that may be a better number to use when measuring adoption over time. Unlike total subscriber numbers, reach numbers do seem to be impacted by whether or not a new post is available. And that makes sense, if you don’t have anything new to read, you won’t have many people reading it. Not everyone reads their subscriptions every day, of course, so you’ll get some people catching up on old posts on days you haven’t published anything new.

Here’s how much reach numbers look and it’s clear that they’re all over the place, probably based on when I have new content.

When you post can make a difference here. For instance, on several days, I posted at night, so most people seemed to have read those posts the next day (such as October 27th and October 30th).

It also appears that days that a particular feed reader doesn’t report numbers impacts the subscriber counts but not the reach counts. This makes sense also since Feedburner aggregates subscriber numbers reported to it, but gathers reach numbers itself.

Looking at per-feed reader numbers
My numbers seem to tell me that while my subscriber counts have gone slightly up over the last month, the actual number of readers I have via subscription have remained basically constant. The last two days look a little depressing, but I’m betting the low numbers are due to a combination of no posts and weekend reporting.

Another thing these numbers show is that web-based feed readers are fairly constant, so if one of them doesn’t report numbers for a given day, you can pretty confidently add the previous day’s number to the total Feedburner count to get accurate stats. With this method, I can infer that I actually had 1049 subscribers on November 9th. Of course, you could just wait until the next day. (Ack! I mean, yes, of course — wait. Perfectly reasonable.)

One thing that’s interesting is that while most of the feed readers trended slightly up (Google Reader went from 468 to 513 and Netvibes went from 133 to 145), Google Desktop was sharply down over the period (67 to 17 — see the purple line in the graph below). Is this because Google Desktop users in particular aren’t fans of the blog or because overall Google Desktop usage is down?

And that’s the other tricky thing with these types of numbers. You are at the mercy of the feed reading services, and changes in usage or reporting may impact the numbers in ways you can’t control.

Overall though, up and to the right is probably a good sign and Rick clearly is right when he says not to obsess about the minutia. Fortunately, I’ve done that for you.

I admit it. I have a problem. It’s possible that sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I reach over to my smartphone and skim the internet a bit while I try to convince myself that I should actually get out of bed and be a productive person. And maybe, every so often, I check my blog subscriber numbers. I blame Feedburner for the obsession. There’s nothing to be done about it now. It’s morning, coffee, Feedburner. It’s just all part of waking up.

I had talked with Rick Klau from Feedburner a couple of weeks ago to see just where the numbers come from. When I woke up this morning and saw that my stats had once again run off to parts unknown (possibly St. Lucia), I figured this morning might be a good time to post that article and let everyone else in on the details.

So, if you’re interested in just how Feedburner comes up with its subscriber numbers, and why some days we wake up to morning, coffee, and a sad, sad stats state, head on over to Search Engine Land and check out How Feedburner Adds Up Subscriber Numbers.