Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Seth Abramson--Nice guy, but confused,...

Over on HTMLGIANT today (the beginning of their Mean Week 2) Blake Butler makes the connection between Sex Ableton (House-Mouse Cock) and Seth Abramson and asks if I've gone too far. Have I? (added December 2010)



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Seth Abramson seems like a very nice guy. Now and then I've looked at his blog,
The Suburban Ecstasies, and though I think he's a bit wordy and a bit anal (a former lawyer) I do think he has a good heart.

His obsession and ideas about how many people come to his blog is a bit strange though. I'm also interested in how many people come to my blog, but I think I'm a bit more realistic than Seth in understanding what a traffic monitor's numbers mean.

Seth has just posted the following on his blog:

"3179: Number of unique visitors to this site today. 14,929 in the last week.

Fact: Less than 1% of those who use TSE services donate to the site.

Needless to say, I offer my heartfelt appreciation to that less than 1%."

to follow is the comment I just posted to that post:

"these numbers are very impressive... but, Seth, how many of these people are coming to yr site and leaving right away ?

A lot of people come to my site because one of my posts from a while back is titled "St. Peter's and the big cock contest." Someone in the United Arab Emirates, for example, (there seem to be a lot of Arabs interested in cock contests) enters "cock contest" or some such into a search engine and they end up at my blog.

Perhaps, like this, a lot of yr traffic is incidental.

I believe people are indeed following and reading your blog.

But, c'mon do you really think that 14,000 plus people this week alone have come to yr blog for its poetry ideas and resources ??"

If you're interested in Seth's ideas and the resources and services of the Suburban Ecstasies check it out. And consider donating.

5 comments:

Rauan Klassnik said...

this is Seth's response to me (on his blog)

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Hi Rauan,

In a word... yes. Which normally wouldn't be my answer (I'd presume the same thing as you) except that, historically speaking, StatCounter's "Keyword Analysis" and "Came From" functions show that more than 90%+ of TSE patrons arrive here either by Googling one of three names/phrases (my own name, the name of the blog/my collection, or some permutation of "MFA rankings"/"mfa application response"), or else through one of several categories of referrers (Tom Kealey's MFA Blog, poetry-bloggers' blogs, or other MFA-related websites [e.g., my Knol on MFA programs, the University of Minnesota MFA program webpage, Wikipedia, etcetera]). The number of "no referrer" hits is surprisingly low as a percentage of total hits, and experience shows that many of these are returning visitors (who must be using Bloglines, or have the page bookmarked, etcetera).

I know it's hard to believe--I'd wager I find it even harder to believe than anyone--but the only large stock of "incidental" hits I get here are the occasional Google searches for (excuse my language, but this 100% true) "ping pong ball queefing bitch Michelle Malkin," because I once wrote an article about Malkin decrying her racist ultra-conservative views, and in doing so quoted her quoting another individual who was spouting racist nonsense.

If I'd known that post would garner between 10 and 100 "unwanted" hits/week, I'd never have written it. Beyond that, though, I'm afraid to say that the traffic figure appears to be legit.

Be well,
Seth
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so, i stand corrected (or do i?)

Rauan Klassnik said...

and, just now, Paul Sweeney writes (on Seth's blog) and Christ this is funny:


"Cock fighting is still very big in many cultures.

Personally, I find it hard to pee the next day."

Anonymous said...

i'm not going to name names, but i think that stat counter boast posts are always pretty funny...i don't think that stat counters tell you much of anything...it's always entertaining, though, to discover what keywords folks are using to find your page...i think scp ranks number 3 or something on google searches of "scantily clad," obviously i get a lot of those hits...

Rauan Klassnik said...

yeah, they're funny.

anything that Ron Silliman does is funny.

wonder if he has trouble peeing the day after cockfighting ?

Anonymous said...

ron,

i think that's definitely a question you should ask him in the comment streams. . .