Stock stats: Plumbing the pageviews

Ah, the mysteries of Google.  I've mentioned before and originally, complete with evidentiary screengrab, that our main stock tank gardening post had reached number one on the internet for that subject matter, but noted that its ranking depends on a number of factors only known to Google itself.

We know, for instance, that Google has a strong geographic influence built into its engine: the closer you are to the source of content, the higher it is likely to rank in your search.

Statcounter has added a feature by which they show you what your hit ranked in many users' returns, where such information is obtainable.  With that in mind, I decided that I'd roughly compare the distance from the source (Houston) versus the ranking presented to a collection of individuals who searched for this content within the past month.  This is only a rough comparison, though, because not every searcher used the same search string, and not all of these pageviews took place on the same day :

Houston - ninth.

Right here in League City - sixth.

Lake Jackson (about 50 miles from here) - first,
but it may have been a repeat load because they
appear to have called the post by name.

Austin (about 200 miles) - fourth.

Lakeside, California - first.
Again, it looks like they searched the post by name.

Murrieta, California - sixth,
and this user has pageloaded on multiple dates.

Often there is no referring link,
which suggests that these folks have
bookmarked the site from a previous visit
or were emailed the URL from someone,
or saw it published somewhere.

Sometimes the search string matches
the blog entry title,
suggesting that these users either
know the name from somewhere else,
or read about the post in an un-linked document.

Unfortunately, Bing does not yield
useful ranking information
the way Google does.

But back to Google.
Minneapolis - fourth,
and this user didn't even use
the key phrase "stock tank".
Google is smart enough to know that
"cattle tank" and "stock tank"
refer to the same item.

MO City (about 30 miles from here) - first,
but they also knew the title words.

Well, yeah, first, but that might have been Lawrence.
But previously he'd reported to me a lower ranking
when the post was accessed from JSC
versus from our home ISP address.

Ohio - sixth, without using
the search term "garden".

New York - fifth.

North Carolina and Rohnert Park CA -
ninth apiece on the same day,
using different search strings.

I notice that international pageloads
are less thoroughly parsed.
No referring link from Bangkok?
Possibly a previous viewer who had bookmarked?

Italy, by way of an image search
for stock tank gardens.
Google does not rank those.

India - the user's search string is provided,
but no ranking.  I guess they don't collate
the ranking results
from different incorporations of Google.

Anyway, so one can see some slight hints of geographic-specific ranking, in that users closer to Houston tended to see the post ranked higher than those farther away.  I've got too many unconstrained variables here to parse the data further, but it's certainly not overwhelmingly based on geography: one here in Houston user saw the post ranked ninth, while one in California saw it as the top-ranked, apparently due to differing specificity in search terminology.  Search terminology can obviously out-weigh geography.

And that's about all the interest I have to devote to this particular nerdy topic.
:-)