Chris Sacca's 'What is left?'

Search Quality? Let's Look at the Logs

[Keep in mind, as always, these posts are my personal expression and are in no way endorsed by my wonderful employer.]

I have recently become a big fan of web analytics services, and, being a data junkie, I have been semi-obsessively tracking how folks get to my blog. According to data from MeasureMap, over the last three months, 8.6% of you who landed somewhere upon the pages of blog came to me by way of a search engine (versus by following a link, directly inputting the address, or clicking through on a feed reader). Where it gets interesting though, is when we behold the actual terms for which users were searching when they clicked through to my blog.

For instance, these are the 20 most frequent searches from Google.com that landed on my blog (in order of frequency):

chris sacca
"chris sacca"
Christopher Sacca
Chris Sacca google
chris sacca blog
christopher sacca google
sacca
www.whatisleft.org
whatisleft
"Christopher Sacca"
brian sacca
"chris sacca" google
google chris sacca
christopher sacca blog
http://www.whatisleft.org/
chris secca
chris sacca what is left
http://www.whatisleft.org/lookie_here/2005/09/want_to_do_busi.html
"christopher sacca" google
devotchka

No need to apply any real science here. These all make sense to me. People searching for my name or the name of my blog should be pointed to my blog, right? I have also written about my brother Brian Sacca, so it's fair to send searchers for his name to me.  I posted an extended entry a month ago about the band Devotchka, and it's been linked to a bit, so I am fine with a few searches for them landing on my piece.

All told, by my very back-of-the-envelope approach, these would all appear to be quality search results. As in, the users who were searching for each of those terms and ended up on my blog would likely rate their search experience worthwhile. (This is certainly not to imply that they would enjoy the content once they got here.)

Yet, when we consider the 20 most frequent terms that led Yahoo.com searchers to my blog, things become a little less clear:

chris sacca
christopher sacca
chris sacca blog
sacca google
chris sacca google
"Christopher Sacca"

So, up to this point, their users are having a fabulous search experience.  But, going forward it looks like there is a wrench in the works at Yahoo:

compilation of persuasive writing
matisyahu live at stubb's free download
footnotes on Essay barbara Ehrenreich, "nickel and dimed: On (Not) getting by in america"
bulldozer reggae song
King Without a Crown (-Matisyahu Live at Stubb's) lyrics
every bod hate chris
beastie boys lyrics +they call obesity an epidemic
_adv_proweb
review of george winston concert
just shoot me astralwerks six feet under
sacca left
beastie boys hits +obesity epidemic
What is The Pogues best album
polina sorkin

Whoa, whoa. What gives? Sure, some of these things are mentioned in passing within these pages. Nickel and Dimed gets a nod in a sidebar that tracks books I read, and the same for Matisyahu on the music list. But 'bulldozer reggae song'? The word 'bulldozer' occurs exactly once in the text and it has nothing to do with reggae. Hmm. What is the rest of this stuff? Once again, there is no science being applied here, and my methodology may prove to be bunk, but my simple read leaves me thinking that most of these searchers left my site without finding that which they originally sought.

Searchers coming to my site from Microsoft's MSN have similarly taken some strange paths to get here:

Tawana Brawley
chris sacca

Okay, let's pause here for a second. Yes, you read correctly. MSN sent more people looking for Tawana Brawley to my blog than people looking for me. Huh? Sure, I mentioned Tawana once in a post two years ago about Al Sharpton. A quick check of the MSN index and it looks like I am thankfully no longer in the results of this search for Ms. Brawley.  But, I must have been in the last three months. Hopefully for MSFT, this is a permanent improvement. However, it looks like there is a lot of work left to be done:

how to get him to propose
mc hammer videos
ideas for proposing Proposing to a man
mc hammer
Chris Sacca google
can't touch this MC hammer
Shhhh Vol. 21
inspiring speech topics
funny 'busier than' quotes
can't touch this
nuptial march
inspiring speech
Fifth HOPE Speeches Woz
business proposals
police + powerpoints
moto razr v3 payment plan
Inspiring school powerpoints

Oh, man. These are all over the map. A few are almost arbitrary. While some of these individual words are scattered among the thousands I have written on my blog, it's hard to believe I would be in the results for many of these searches.  I have very little advice to offer for people looking to buy RAZRs on a payment plan, and I am fresh out of guidance as to how cops use Powerpoint.

I am in no position to vouch for the statistical significance of my search logs versus others, and I clearly would not consider myself an independent observer of this space. I am nowhere near enough of an engineer to affirm the value of these findings. However, on a comparative basis within these data, the Google results leave me feeling comfortable with my favorite search engine.

I am interested to hear what is in your logs. How do searchers get to your blog? Are my results typical? What can I conclude from this? Anything?

Reflecting on Dark Days

This is my first weekend at home in weeks. My home is littered with half unpacked bags and laundry piles of hazardous scale. I will have many stories from the last few weeks to tell in the days that come. My travels have landed me in some unique settings. Yet, it was a recent visit to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival that reminded me of a tale I have been meaning to relay for years.

It was January of 2000. We were all awash in the excess of the bull market, and CNBC was more prevalent on the televisions of local bars than ESPN. I had been living a spell in Park City, UT juggling various identities as a self-indulgent ski bum, entrepreneur with mixed results, manic day trader, and soon-to-be law school grad.  My friends and I found ourselves reveling in the gluttony of the film festival. Scheming our way past the velvet rope and scaring up tequila shots with a decidedly random assortment of celebrities. A gaggle of twenty-somethings fattening ourselves on the finger foods of Hollywood's studios du jour.

Not being completely without regard for aesthetics and cultural fulfillment, we would find time between backcountry ski sessions and the shindigs on Main Street to catch an independent flick or two. Hype rarely correlates with quality at these festivals, so we could sometimes unknowingly score tickets to some real gems. I remember not even waiting in line to see the sleeper hit The Woman Chaser a few years ago. In the shorts, there are always beauties like The Wildest Show in the South: The Angola Prison Rodeo. However, one film from 2000 stands out in my mind year after year and continues to affect me deeply.

Dark Days, a first-effort documentary by Marc Singer, really snuck up on me. Billed with Singer's trademark modesty, the audience expected a traditionally distant and abbreviated documentary on the plight of homeless people in America. What transpired in the film though was nothing short of cathartic.

Over the course of the next 94 minutes, the audience was thrust into the foreboding train tunnels of Penn Station. This dangerous underground labyrinth comprised a barely habitable locale housing a shockingly resilient and inventive community of squatters determined to defy the depths of their personal struggles to survive and maintain a sense of identity in the process. Their yearning for stability, comfort, and control over their own destiny unfolded in first person accounts framed by the stark images of where they call home.

So here we were, bellies full of hors d'oeuvres from the Miramax soiree, last night's vodka tonics lingering in our veins, and a daisy chain of then $70 ski lift tickets dangling from our parkas. Minutes later, we are there, in the tunnels. Silent witnesses to an unending and painful pursuit of life's basic needs.

Grainy, imbalanced lighting, and shaky camerawork confirm the film's authenticity. I learned later that Singer had used the subjects of the film themselves as the crew. Autodidacts determined to have their stories heard. Music by the incomparable DJ Shadow sparingly complements the scenes and will push any hesitating tears from your eyes.

The entire film is a masterpiece. Inspired, humble, direct, challenging. When the lights came up, there was a palpable pause among the crowd before the applause erupted. Introspection dominated. We each realized the searing irony of our surroundings, and took a moment to digest it all. Wet eyes abounded.

In the Sundance premiere tradition, the director stood in front of the screen to answer questions about the film. Often, this presents various members of the audience the chance to posit narcissistic diatribes masquerading as questions, but really just chances for these folks to hear themselves speak. One such 'questioner' arose to spout on and on about the use of black and white film. He bandied about a plethora of delicious film school adjectives and flexed his cinematic intellectual muscle dropping names of obscure art pioneers all while complimenting Marc's choice of black and white as a well-informed maverick decision.

When the verbal diarrhea had subsided, and it was Marc's turn to respond, he quietly, and with his demure British accent, stated simply, "The guy at the film store said that if I had never shot with color before, I would fuck it up. Thus, black & white." Stunning pragmatism once again contrasting with the unabashedly abstract surroundings and putting the questioner's ass back into his seat.

A similarly wordy viewer asked the next question, which essentially boiled down to "How did you get these people to trust you considering you were an outsider to their world?" Marc, paused briefly, presumably reflecting upon the gravity of his experience, then proceeded to tell us, in an almost whisper, "I lived right there with them in the tunnels on and off for most of three years."

No one uttered a word for the next full minute. We have all known folks in our lives who dedicate themselves to helping others. I live in awe of them every day. But, here I was considering a British kid my same age, who had so unflinchingly dedicated himself to the goal of telling this story, that he had abandoned our collective life of urban privilege to live in disease-ridden and polluted train tunnels among homeless people . . . for three years!

I will never forget that night. Beset on all sides by fleeting tastes of opulence, there were a group of us who said very little, and who couldn't partake of the excess.  The loud parties went on without us, and we just cooked fajitas at home, telling stories of where we grew up and remembering our buddies from school. Never before or since have I been so moved by a film, and very little reminds me more poignantly of just how lucky I am.

 

Just back from the Big Easy

I spent the last couple of days in New Orleans and I will never forget what I saw.

It truly is hard to imagine the devastating effects of this storm without seeing the ongoing cleanup efforts firsthand. Members of the New Orleans Police Department escorted me through the areas hardest hit. The high water line was still visible on all of the homes, sometimes being found, not on the walls, but on the roofs. Each tattered house was spray painted with code numbers detailing which of the military branches had searched it, on which date, and how many dead bodies were found inside. Whole houses had floated down the block and cars and boats were still hung up on trees. Massive piles of debris were everywhere, and demolition contractors hauled out sheetrock and roofing for miles around.

Downtown, though the flooding was not as bad, the gutters were still overflowing with the jetsam of mass exodus. Skyscrapers were pocked with shattered windows and well more than half of the businesses remained boarded up. It just seemed inconceivable that I was still in the United States. That this level of decimation could occur within our borders doesn't compute for me.

During my stay, I had the luck to meet so many fantastic New Orleans residents and hear their harrowing stories. I met Greg Meffert, the Vice Mayor and City CIO who went into an Office Depot during the flood to commandeer some equipment for the command center. I met Emeril Lagasse, who, though he didn't need to be slinging chow on a Tuesday night in New Orleans, was manning the kitchen at his place and came out to chat at our table, keeping everyone's spirits high about the City's recovery. I also met Mayor Ray Nagin, who will always hold a place in my heart for telling the Bush administration to "Get off your asses". Such stand-up people with a sincere belief and dedication to rebuilding that city.

All told, this trip was humbling. I deeply admire the folks who are heads down trying to rebuild and I hope to return for another visit soon.