Well, 2012 has finally arrived, but 2011 was a great year for The Occult Section. We averaged about 15,000 hits per month, added some writers, added some advertising, and of course, stirred some pots. But in going through our stats, we’ve come across some interesting, funny, and sometimes perplexing trends for the year, which tells us a lot about how some of our readers find us.
Here in Part 2, I’ll list some of the top search terms used to find our site, and some really bizarre ones that people have used (and strangely enough, found us, of all things).
Top Search Keywords
1. “denied”: I’m not sure why this was our most popular keyword for 2011. The post that is most often visited though this term is our post Ghost hunters denied request to investigate haunted house. I guess there are lots of ghost hunters out there who don’t like to be told “no.”
2. “finding bigfoot animal planet”: This year saw the debut of the new Animal Planet show Finding Bigfoot, and it definitely created a lot of buzz. Many people were initially excited to learn that a show about Bigfoot hunting would come on the air, and give us a break from all of the ghost hunting shows, but once it aired, all sorts of controversy arose. Claims of creative editing and staged evidence began to swirl around the show, even from members of the cast, including Matt Moneymaker from the BFRO. But as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The ratings went through the roof, and Finding Bigfoot is now in its second season. And I have yet to watch an entire episode.
3. “yeti”: Even though we haven’t done too many blog posts about the Himalayan cryptid, the Yeti has been in the news many times this year, from Russian scientists claiming to have indisputable proof (Has the Yeti Really Been Discovered?), to the debunking through DNA evidence of the Pangboche finger (DNA Analysis Debunks Himalayan ‘Yeti Finger’). So the Yeti had lots of good exposure this year, but still no proof of his existence. Poor guy.
4. “the far side”: I have always loved The Far Side, the comic strip by Gary Larson, and did a handful of posts this year featuring some of my favorite paranormally and cryptozoologically themed gags from the strip, and it seems as though it’s still popular with many people, enough to be our fourth most popular search term for the year. You can see them all right here.
5. “andre rand”: Andre Rand, for those who don’t know, was the subject of a documentary called “Cropsey,” which documents the child killings on Staten Island, NY back in the 1970s and early 1980s. Rand was a mentally challenged homeless person, who through a mess of circumstantial evidence, was tried and convicted of some of the murders. Even though our first article about the film was back in 2010 (Cropsey: Staten Island’s Boogeyman?), our posts on “Cropsey” have been among the most popular ever on our blog, so we’re not surprised to see Andre Rand (as well as other “Cropsey“-related keywords) on this list.
People Actually Used These Keywords To Find Our Site
1. “occult porn”: I’m not sure which is stranger: that someone is looking for this search term, or that it linked back to our site. And not just once. We got 209 hits from this exact phrase.
2. “jumping off a cliff”: Very strange and the best we can come up with is that it’s somehow tied into a post we did back in 2010 about some would-be ghost hunters falling off a cliff (Teen Ghost Hunters Jump Off Cliff Fleeing ‘Haunted” Sanatorium). Very odd seeing how many people are using this search term (173 for us in 2011).
3. “sigmund the sea monster”: Not so strange, as I’ve used Sigmund photos for a few of my posts from this year. What can I say, I love those old Sid & Marty Krofft shows as a kid. And I mean Sigmund is just a great compliment to those stories.
4. “zak bagans body”: I can’t get this detail from our blog stats, but I’m guessing these were all girls under the age of 17. By the count on our blog stats, it’s 50 of them. Haha.
5. “muppets animal”: We actually have two posts on our blog featuring Animal from the Muppets, one by Michelle Mason (Haunted House Attractions: To Go or Not to Go?) and one by me (Mysterious Images Spotted In Colbert County EMA Office), which also features one of my all-time favorite Photoshopped images that I’ve ever created. I just crack myself up. Both of these posts are from 2010, but are still getting a respectable amount of hits for the Muppet drummer.
