no discernable pattern in logs

[tyrojds]

"keep an eye on your logfiles and find out what your visitors are looking for. Try to deduce a typical pattern"

"One place to find keyword gems is to watch your log files for quirky search phrases."

this is great advice and seems to represent a consensus, however, i'm not sure how to apply it in my case. my puzzle is that 90% of the search terms/phrases that people use to reach my site are quirky and anecdotal. i get 50 keyword/phrases for 60 visits. worse, to say they're a different 50 every day would only be a slight exaggeration. bottom line: i can't find a pattern and the overwhelming majority of the search terms are not worth optimizing for individually, therefore i can't really see value in coming high in listings for random search phrases. (thanks to these forums, i have had some good success getting my preferred keywords in good SERP position, but we're new and these haven't yielded much actual business - but that's a different issue.)

anyone have similar problem? relevant threads? solutions? thanks.

[Mohamed_E]

I find that three kinds of keywords are used to reach my site:

1. Traditional keywords that I optimize on. My site deals with a large number of named widgets, and I have a page optimized for each name.
   
2. Qualifiers that I had not thought of explicitly optimizing for, until they turned up. For example, most of my widgets are only found in one state, but many searchers, hoping for better relevancy add the state name (some spell it out, others abbreviate it, UGH). I now make it a point of semi-optimizing for several qualifiers.
   
3. My pages have a lot of content, so people come to them with all kinds of strange searches. This is probably the kind of thing that tyrojds was referring to. Usually all I do is smile, but occasionally I see a pattern developing so I do some optimizing.
   

I believe that the advice to look carefully at your logs is aimed at the second class of keywords. If most queries fall into the third class there is not much information to be mined from the logs.

[Longhaired Genius]

Are you looking at your search strings only day-by-day?

Are you able to see a month's-worth or a weeks's-worth at a time?

[MeditationMan]

Sounds like your traffic isn't high enough for you to discern the patterns. I think Longhaired Genius is right -- you need to look at the longer term picture. You might not find much, but there should be a few surprisingly common searches that you could optimize further for.

[tyrojds]

Are you looking at your search strings only day-by-day...

Yes, day by day is the only way the info is avail to me (unless i'm missing something - how unlike me,lol)

the advice is very helpful, thanks again.

[deejay]

day by day is the only way the info is avail to me

That's where your problem is.. not enough info for the patterns to show.

Been there, done that. :) I have a low traffic site where the host only puts up the logs on an html file for the day and then overwrites them the next day. I go in daily, copy the info out and save it as a csv, then pull it into an access database.

Voila... three years worth of tracking info and some very clear patterns that you just couldn't see on a small sample.

:) Time to build a database... or a spreadsheet... or anything that will collate it all really.

[MeditationMan]

Time to build a database... or a spreadsheet... or anything that will collate it all really.

...or get a better stats service. There are free tools available, although you tend to get what you pay for. I pay for my stats service and I'm pleased with what I get although it doesn't tell me if bots have visited. The company says they're working on that one.