My Newest Claim to Fame

People search for some interesting things on Google.

I found out my newest claim to fame this weekend: my website is the second result listed on a Google search for “beer and chocolate diet.” Forget hammer throwing, I think I might write a book about a new fad diet.

It has been two years since I started to invest a lot of time in this website. Before then, I would write training updates once or twice a month to a handful of daily readers. For example I had 88 visitors before August 2009. Last month I had visitors more than 88 countries. It’s not that I’ve become more interesting. Hardly. It’s just that I found something more interesting to write about: others. For some reason, you all find it more interesting when I write about training methods, about the state of the hammer, and about the politics or other aspects of the event.

The site’s growth has been fun. It has given the event more exposure, introduced me to new people, and taught me more about the event. But the best part can be looking through some of the site’s statistics and seeing how people wind up at my page. Obviously, hammer throw and training search terms bring the most traffic. I also get a lot of traffic looking for information about many of the people I write about; I am high on the Google results for Bondarchuk, Hal Connolly, Sergej Litvinov, Dylan Armstrong, Jean-Pierre Egger, etc. The same goes for some of the meets I’ve competed at, like Fränkisch-Crumbach.

But the irregular visitors are the most interesting. I have visitors looking for information on rhythm, or driving to Kamloops. I had a visitor looking for “is ibuprofen on the sports doping banned list“. I sure as heck hope not or I wouldn’t be able to wake up early and get to practice before work some days. Another asked “are american athletes already into the metric system“. No, they aren’t, but hammer throwers do better than most.

But as I mentioned earlier, the most surprising is that I get a constant stream of visitors searching for the “beer and chocolate diet.” Perhaps it is a scientist researching a new diet. Or maybe someone decided to start a diet by looking for one that already fits their preferences. But often these visitors will stay on the site for several minutes, perhaps searching for details, and one even asked “is beer and chocolate a good diet?” Again, the answer is no, but thanks for visiting.