Of links, searches, and the garden blogosphere
When I started GWI in April, 2005, I didn’t think there was such a thing as a garden blogosphere. To my knowledge, there was one other gardening blog, 1,2,3, go—garden! (though it was not called that then), and, thanks to sitemeter, I knew I had about 4 visits a day.
What a difference a year makes. Though GWI will never compete with blogs that owe their popularity to their witty and enlightening critiques of celebrities, I now have a respectably higher visitor count and, much better, I have learned about a world-wide network of gardening blogs, many of them collected in gardenweb.com’s Garden Voices. What a great idea that was.
Many gardeners have been kind enough to provide links to GWI—thanks!—and I try to reciprocate, though I’m not really into long blogrolls. The best blogs get lost in the shuffle that way, and I think a link to Voices is probably a better service when all’s said and done.
It’s interesting to see how people find their way to a blog. A good third of the GWI visits are driven by Google, and, ironically, the searchword that invariably leads them to me is “sempervivum,” a plant I trashed a couple months ago. (I still don’t like it.) I also come up in the early pages of searches for “intoxicated,” and, rather unfortunately, “driving while intoxicated” (if typed without quotes). Oh well, hopefully I provide a pause of comic relief for that undoubtedly grim research.
Anyway, all this is to say “Thanks!” to Garden Voices and the other bloggers, and “Cool!” as a general comment on the fun that garden blogging provides—when you know there is a community out there.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
What a difference a year makes. Though GWI will never compete with blogs that owe their popularity to their witty and enlightening critiques of celebrities, I now have a respectably higher visitor count and, much better, I have learned about a world-wide network of gardening blogs, many of them collected in gardenweb.com’s Garden Voices. What a great idea that was.
Many gardeners have been kind enough to provide links to GWI—thanks!—and I try to reciprocate, though I’m not really into long blogrolls. The best blogs get lost in the shuffle that way, and I think a link to Voices is probably a better service when all’s said and done.
It’s interesting to see how people find their way to a blog. A good third of the GWI visits are driven by Google, and, ironically, the searchword that invariably leads them to me is “sempervivum,” a plant I trashed a couple months ago. (I still don’t like it.) I also come up in the early pages of searches for “intoxicated,” and, rather unfortunately, “driving while intoxicated” (if typed without quotes). Oh well, hopefully I provide a pause of comic relief for that undoubtedly grim research.
Anyway, all this is to say “Thanks!” to Garden Voices and the other bloggers, and “Cool!” as a general comment on the fun that garden blogging provides—when you know there is a community out there.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
Comments
thanks!
(and it was a long tangled blogroll from garden blog to garden blog that brought me here)
Now, good grief, you tell me about Garden Voices and their long blogroll just in case I come up with some more spare time. By the way, you may not be critiquing celebrities, but you are certainly witty and enlightening!