The Knitting Fiend

As some visitors know, I like to examine my referer logs to learn what brings people to my blog and site. I found this:

YO, Knit 2 tog, YO. Knit 3, YO, Knit 2, YO, Knit 6.

Yes, someone who is probably from Portugal entered that phrase into a google search and got to my site. It looks like an instruction to knit a row of lace. Boy, I hope they found what they wanted!

While I got a chuckle when I saw such a detailed search, on of the reasons I read referer logs is to gain inspiration for “how to knit” articles or to try to find ways to improve my blog. Of course, I see lots of searches for things I’ve discussed in blog articles. ( Let me tell you, lots of knitters want to learn how to knit i-cord!) What surprises me is all the people who Google sends to me for topics that, as far as I’m aware, I’ve never talked about. Or at least, things I haven’t discussed directly, or in any way completely. Examples:

• Invisible cast on method. I wasn’t sure what this meant, and thought “No way I’ve discussed that. Still, I decided to I google. I discovered that some people call a provisional cast on an “invisible cast on”. Interestingly, I am also familiar with what I consider to be an honest to goodness invisible cast on for 1 x 1 ribbing. I see a “how to article” on it’s way!
• Graft paper. Constantly. Ok, I’ve got a graph paper generator. It took me a long time to figure out why google sent people here for “graft paper”. I finally figured it out. Google indexes my pages in a variety of ways. Because I have monthly archives, it indexes them the month. So, at some point during the same month, I discussed grafting (or kitchener stitch) and graph paper. Of course, now I’m actually discussing “graft paper”; so google will send even more people here for “graft paper”. That’s not so bad. After all, I do have “graph paper”, and that’s probably what they want.
  By the way, I love traffic to my blog, I’d prefer to avoid luring people who are looking for things that are not here. I’ve fixed my robots.txt file to keep Google and other spiders from indexing whole months as one article. That should prevent the search engines from sending knitters looking for “knit onions” to my archive for May.
  Ok, now I’ve said “knit onions” right here in this article. Now, I’ll be luring knit surfers under false pretenses. Still, I think you know what I mean.
• Knit belts. I don’t have a pattern, for a belt. Google being what it is, I’ve probably used the words “belt” and “knit” in articles that appeared sometime during the same month!
  If you want to knit a belt, I think you should design your own! Cast on a few stitches and knit garter stitch until it’s as long as you want the belt to be. If you want something fancier, look up any non-curling stitch. But, clearly, I need to knit a belt. I’m thinking of looking for some fancy stitch and using mercerized cotton. It would be kind of nifty.

As a final comment, I’d like to mention that when I examine my referer logs, I also try to identify the pages Google sends these surfers to. Based on my observations, I made some changes to my main page — because Google sometimes often sends them to the precisely correct page, and sometimes sends them to the main page.

Yesterday, that mean people looking for “knit belts’”, or that very detailed lace pattern, got to read my haiku on flowering onions! So, to help people find what they want, I added a whole bunch of links to the side bar. Chances are, the Portuguese knitter who entered an instruction for knitting an entire row of a lace patter was looking for a lace pattern. Hopefully they found “stitch patterns” in the sidebar and found what they wanted!

Now, I’m going to alternate working on the yoke for Jim’s sweater and helping him put together a picnic table he’s making. Hopefully, next month, I’ll get a chuckle when people come to my site looking for “knit picnic table”.