One of the nicest features of having your own web site is playing ‘detective’.
Every day the web server produces a huge amount of data; every single page you request and every single picture on that page is recorded in the log files. I use these log files to see who visited me, when did I receive those visitors, what kind of computers do they use, which pages are the most popular, … But the most interesting is to know how they got onto my site. Especially the visitors which entered from a search engine are interesting, because they were looking for some information.
This week I noticed something strange in my logs: I received a lot of visitors who were looking for information about Astor Piazolla. I started thinking, because until I wrote this article, there is absolutely no mention about Astor Piazolla on this site. I have to admit that I like Astor Piazolla and his New Tango a lot; I even have some of his work on CD.
Aaaah, that’s it! On my former web site, I maintained a list of all CD’s I own. That list must still be in de databases of those web sites. But visitors of my old web site are automatically forwarded to the new one.
That only leaves the question why suddenly people start searching for Astor Piazolla. All the Dutch readers already know the answer, but I had absolutely no idea. Until I talked with my parents. Of course they told me about the big event in Holland: the wedding of Willem-Alexander and Maxima. And my mother told me that she liked the moment when Maxima showed some tears when they played Argentine music. And this piece of music (Adios Nonino by Astor Piazolla) is now nr. 1 in the Dutch hit charts. So thanks to the royal wedding I received a lot of hits.
Case closed.
[Update 2004.01.21]: Removed broken link
