There have been numerous musings on OTB about the lousyness that is blogspot. Kathy has offered to help people get off blogspot. Michele is begging people to do likewise.

Now, I understand why the very poor–who are not getting a tax cut anywhere near as large a tax cut as Bill Gates under the oppressive Republican plan –can’t afford a real host. But why the hell is Dave Barry (aka Cannot find server) still on it?

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Looking at my referal stats reveals some interesting, indeed, disturbing trends. The top search phrases that have landed visitors:

destiny stahl picture
picture of destiny stahl
alabama earthquake
bill bennett s gambling
bill bennett gambling
bennett gambling
mike price destiny picture
destiny stahl sports illustrated
townsend sexual offender
dog/webresults.htm
bob bennett gambling
mike price destiny sports illustrated
destiny stahl pics
dear prudie
sports illustrated mike price destiny
santorum parod
villepin knight
dixie chicks chicken feet tatoo
santorum nude
sars vs. aids
picture destiny stahl

Clearly, Destiny Shahl is one popular chick. And, those two people who came by looking for “santorum nude” . . . well, words fail me.

I also can not explain this phenomenon: I’ve received link mentions on a handful of really major blogs this past week. But the referral traffic does not necessarily correlate with blog bigness. I received a very prominent mention on Volohk Conspiracy and garnered only 20 visits. A mention by Megan yesterday yielded 226 (267 total visits from her site, including some from her comment section). This is strange, since Volohk is higher than Megan on the TTLB rankings and, according to their site logs, he also gets more traffic.

Stranger still is that I have gotten almost as much traffic from Possumblog as I have from Megan. Now, granted, I’m on his blogroll and not hers. But Terry is merely an “Adorable Little Rodent” in the Ecosystem.

All of which leads me to wonder: Does traffic equal reading? Do people simply “check in” to some sites out of habit but not really read them, whereas visitors to such sites as Possumblog, which is much less established and less blogrolled, actually read every word? Or, am I making big logical leaps from a too-small sample size?

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