If you’re looking for a can’t-miss business idea, I can assure you there’s money in the custom ping pong paddle industry.  Seriously.

The most common search term that lands people here continues to involve homemade paddles, with “China home made ping pong paddles” and “sweet paint jobs for a paddle” showing up this month.  Though, actually, that last one may be related to something else entirely that maybe we should ignore.

I’m not sure how to monetize that — maybe do-it-yourself kits, mall kiosks offering custom paint jobs — but there’s money there for sure.

For anyone who still doesn’t agree with my method for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, at least I include the peanut butter part.  Someone ended up at that post recently after Googling “Jelly on bread.”  Sounds delicious.

One of the cool things about the service I use to see this info is that it will (sometimes) tell you where your site ranked in the search results.  Even better is seeing how ridiculously patient some people are when browsing those results.

Take this recent example.  Someone in India searched “Gutters cleaning service,” which after 197 other results listed my post about the epidemic of gutter-cleaning peeps leaving flyers stuck in our front door.  For the record, we still aren’t interested.  If the Google page shows 10 results at a time, that means they browsed through nearly 20 pages of other options before reading my post.  And even then, it could in no way have had anything to do with what they were actually looking for.

Those are my favorite outcomes, when what I wrote has absolutely no bearing on what the person was trying to find out.  Someone once searched something like “what aisle silly bandz target” and ended up at a post describing these awesome marshmallows I found at Target and a completely unrelated anecdote that mentioned Silly Bandz.

Thanks to another search a few weeks ago, I now know that Googling “tweety tat” brings up one of my posts as the fifth result.  It has nothing to do with Tweety Bird or tattoos, of course.  Just me talking about my Twitter habits.

There was one search in the past month that did really make me curious about the searcher.  They said, “Why not live it up take the risk,” and landed on this post from 2007.  I was writing about the movie 10 mph, which tells the story of a team of people who were unsatisfied with their lives, quit their jobs and pursued a project of riding Segways across the country.

I wrote it the day after I quit a job that was sucking the life out of me and daily worsening a sense of personal disappointment.  Whether that somehow drew me to this movie, or if it just happened to come to me at a time it would really speak to me, it did help to put some things in perspective.

I hope in this one case the searcher found what they were looking for.

I’m glad to see that some people have also started making use of the buttons on the bottom of each post that allow you to easily share something you like.   If there’s one thing people love to do these days, it’s sharing links, and the buttons make it easy to email, post on Twitter and Facebook, or for the really cool kids, +1 it on Google.

As always, thanks for reading.

If my blog readers are representative of the world as whole, life on Earth isn’t so bad right now.

I have a traffic counting service here that shows me some information about everyone, including the Google searches that sometimes bring visitors. I share these from time to time (August 2010, October 2009), usually because they feature ridiculous queries of people who are going to be really disappointed with the lack of answers they find here.

Apparently making your own ping pong paddle is a major concern these days. Since March, some version of “homemade ping pong paddle” has by far been most-searched term among people who came here from Google. Maybe I should start selling my collection?

One oddly persistent search string is something like “snl your not tall midget” which refers to a Saturday Night Live skit I posted a link to in September 2009. Sure, it’s a funny segment, but for this one I really have Google to thank. For some reason, my post is the #3 result for that grammatically dubious search, even ahead of the actual Hulu link that’s included in my post.

We did have one new addition this month thanks to the realization of a lifelong dream for me. Last week someone came here after searching “declares nba draft.” It’s likely they were actually trying a more specific search like “Harrison Barnes declares nba draft” but I hope they enjoyed my story about becoming an official NBA free agent.

Within the blog, I recently added “labels” below each post that allow you to search for similar content with a simple click. People seem to be slowly catching on to this system, which I think brings a lot of good context with the archives and lessens the need for me to explain who certain people are or recap events I’ve already written about.

Most of you get here following links I post on Facebook and Twitter, and not surprisingly the vast majority of hits are from the United States. There were hits in the past month from Brazil, Australia, Colombia, Canada, Spain and Chile, though I know some of those people.

I actually try to use all the info I can see (which also includes your city and Internet service provider) to figure who my readers are. Sometimes it’s very easy — I only know so many people in Denver or in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

But I do have one problematic reader. That is, I have one reader for whom I have what I think should be enough information to figure out who they are, but for some reason I just can’t.

So if we are Facebook friends, and you work at the State Department, please send me a note. Your anonymity is making my head hurt.

[Update: We have a winner! Just goes to show sometimes all you need to do is ask.]

Most of the people who read the blog are people I know and actually intend to be here. But a fair number are Googling other things and their search terms just happen to bring up one of my posts.

The traffic counting service that I use shows me their exact Google searches, which I find extremely entertaining and like to share from time to time.

The most popular one this month has been “get two beers and jump,” which is a song done by Jimmy Fallon on his late night NBC show. I linked to his video in a post about the JetBlue flight attendant who, well, got two beers and jumped. About 20 people used that exact term, though even more interesting are the variants: “meaning of 2beers and a jump” and “3 beers and you jump song.” I think those people did more of a “get two beers and Google.”

Of course if you follow me on Twitter (@chwilbur), you know that I thanked the @JimmyFallon fans for their unintended page views. Most people don’t read more than the page in the Google search, but occasionally I see some people who will read many more posts than they should from someone they don’t know.

The most random one in a long, long time came in a few days ago: “bebop soda good.” Usually I can read the search string and know exactly which blog it linked to without having to look. In this case, I am happy to report that I am sane enough that this one made no sense. It turns out I shared a story I wrote in elementary school that included a character with “bebop” in his name. After some Googling myself, it looks like “bebop soda good” is a quote from the Cartoon Network Adult Swim show Sealab 2021. I bet a fan of that show would really enjoy my story.

The string “retail manager after college” is not quite as funny as the others, especially given the post it linked to. I have no idea what sort of information that person was looking for, but reading that post may have really bummed them out (though I think it’s a pretty good one).

I’ll end with the category of posts that are not only not helpful to people, but definitely waste their time. In the past few weeks people searched “marshmallow silly bandz” and “in what aisle in target are the silly bandz.” Clearly they were looking for constructive information to accomplish a task. Instead they got this post that has no value to them whatsoever. Sorry.

This blog was brought to you by grilled cheese sandwiches and Norah Jones.

I want you to know, I’m happy you’re here.

How you got here isn’t important, but know that your path could have been pretty entertaining for me. Especially those of you who were just looking for information about pumas.

Some people follow the blog and see every post that way. Others got here from a link on my Facebook page, while some more may have been referred by a friend.

I could say I’m some kind of psychic so in tune with my content that I’m able to figure all of that out on my own. But my friend technology gives me a hand with some stats about readers.

That’s how I know about the pumas.

Another popular way people end up here is through a Web search, usually Google. When this happens, I can see the search terms that brought them here. There’s nothing funnier than seeing that someone visited your blog after Googling the phrase “amazing true facts on pumas.”

My new favorite, “how often should you wear sweatpants.” The blog related to sweatpants doesn’t directly answer that pressing question, but wear them as often as feels right.

Of course the first thing I do when I see one of those search terms that landed someone at cjhannas.blogspot.com is to Google the string myself. I like to see what their other options were for obtaining the information. Out of 344,000 results for the sweatpants query, In Defense of Sweatpants is the eighth link — just behind a blog by Anderson Cooper.

Somehow I don’t see Anderson as a sweats guy. Maybe Google should rework the algorithm.