Along with some other nifty stats, the program I use for analyzing the web site’s access logs is able to tell me what terms people typed into the various search engines that directed them to my little corner of the web. Unsurprisingly, the largest amount of my site’s search traffic is people looking for convention listings. But not all of them

Early last year, I discovered that a strange beeping noise I’d been hearing periodically was a malfunctioning smoke detector. It’s long been one of the more popular entries on Dividing by Zero, but until recently that only meant it was getting viewed 10 or 15 times per month.

In July, the most popular page on the site was an article Dave wrote about “‘Beat Me with a Stick’ Elmo and other great toys.” That had been a popular article for a while, so I wasn’t surprised to see it riding high during a wave of news stories about malfunctioning Elmo dolls that sounded like Elmo was literally asking to be clobbered.

In August, requests for the Elmo article dropped to only one the entire month. At the same time, requests for information about “Smoke Detectors Beeping” became the single most popular reason for search engines to send people my way.

I didn’t check the logs too carefully, but as of tonight, variations on smoke detectors account for 13-15% of the search traffic reaching my site.

And where there’s smoke… 🙂