I’ve been in the web site business for a long time (something like 15-16 years). Nothing about the internet “creeps me out,” and by that I mean I don’t care that Gmail scans your email to find relevant ads to show you or that Facebook displays ads to you based on your profile data. It’s no biggie. Seriously, not a big deal at all. So when I give you a little “inside baseball,” don’t get scared. People who own (or rent) their own server space, basically anyone with their own .com or whatever like me, typically have access to all kinds of information about their visitors: the websites that people came from, the web browsers they used, the time spent on the site, the pages visited, and all kinds of other things.

One of the most fun things I like to look at is a summary of keywords and phrases typed into sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and whatnot that people used to end up on my web site. For instance, a common one that makes sense is people searching for “matt aromando.” That’s my name, so they should end up here. Why they are searching for me, I do not know, but I’m grateful. As a website grows in popularity and content, more and more keywords become relevant to it. I used to get some good ones when I ran TheMTA.com and I had the idea to write about them back then but I never had a good space for that, though now I have this little blog. I think this site is just far enough along where I can start a monthly post summarizing all the best ones of the previous month. For example, a few I’ve received thus far, from March through August:

• “grandma comedians” – I’m not sure what this person really wanted, but they probably ended up at my article about Grandma’s Basement, a comedy venue that I occasionally perform stand-up at.
• “aromando entertainment” – The word “entertainer” sounds like I’m doing something sexy, that can’t be true.
• “naked comedy showcase” – Well, maybe someone does want to see more than I usually allow.
• “cheap words for words with friends” – Someone no doubt looking for my expertise in the area of “za.”
• “happy cactus” – Ah, my internationally known drawing.

Look forward to the September review in early October!