In April, I wrote a post entitled “Leak Proof, My Ass!” on my personal blog. It was a satirical piece in which Noah Leak, the inventor of the leak proof sippy cup, was “interviewed” on the talk show “Things That Suck.” It was a long-winded way for me to say how much I hated leaking sippy cups. It was mildly funny at best. I think about seven people read it when it was first posted.
Within days of it being published, however, it became one of my most popular posts. I couldn’t understand why. Of all my literary and intellectual masterpieces, this was decidedly not one of them. Why were so many people reading this piece?
It was at this point that I noticed a section of my stats page that I had not previously given much attention – the part that tells you what people searched for to land on your blog.
And there I discovered the answer. In amongst phrases such as “Jared Karol” and “lick the fridge” and “twin dad” and “toddlers” were phrases such as “why is my ass leaking?” and “my ass hurts” and “I have proof that my ass leaks.”
Hardly an expert on search engine optimization, I got a quick lesson on how it all works, and it started to make a little more sense why this post was receiving so much attention.
On the one hand, I was happy for the bump in my stats. Although I had to wonder how many people who were searching for the solution to their leaking ass continued to read a piece about sippy cups beyond the first few lines.
At first I thought the whole thing was funny. I like a good ass joke as much as the next guy. I could picture someone typing, “why is my ass leaking?” into the search bar and seeing “Lick the Fridge – Leak Proof, My Ass” as one of the top results, and thinking they’d found gold.
But then I kind of felt bad because what if this ass leaking was a serious medical condition and I had provided the searcher with a temporary false hope. Should I take the post down? Change its title? Turn myself in?
Six months later and I still see a lot of ass leaking phrases in the search section of my stats page. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that titles are important. I’m just glad I didn’t go with my original idea of naming my blog about being the father of twins Twice As Hard.
About Jared Karol
Dude. I’m STILL laughing. HI-LARIOUS.
Twitter Name: ASeriousGirl
Dude. I’m STILL laughing. HI-LARIOUS. ‘Why is my ass leaking” is now officially my new favorite thing to say.
Twitter Name: ASeriousGirl
I think we should ALL go around asking that question to random strangers. . .
Twitter Name: lickthefridge
You know, a little punctuation goes a long way. Remove a comma here, insert a hyphen there, and you’ve got “Leak-Proof My Ass”.
Ah, yes, good old punctuation indeed. Like “Let’s eat, Grandma” versus “Let’s eat Grandma.” I wonder if she tastes good. And I wonder if the searchers were having problems with their donkeys leaking. Hmmmm?
Twitter Name: lickthefridge
Got to love that SEO stuff. When my son was little he told me that his penis was broken and I of course blogged about it.
This has generated a fair amount of traffic from being people who are googling “Broken Penis.” I don’t want to tell you how much that bothers me but I will confess that I looked it up.
You don’t need Lorena Bobbit to make sure your friend doesn’t feel so good any more.
Twitter Name: thejackb
First, I want to say that I hope your son is feeling better. Second, I am going out right now to by protective equipment. . .
Twitter Name: lickthefridge
Back in the day, I used to read my stats to see what search terms brought folks to my blog. The top three were “schmutzy pants,” “pear-shaped mama,” and “Polish Christmas foods.” That’s when I stopped checking.
Twitter Name: MamaKaren
That’s pretty funny – objectively of course! Maybe I should stop checking too. It does give you the slightest bit of insight into the variety of topics people are interested in though . . .
Twitter Name: lickthefridge