Every year I write a post that goes over my blog searches for the year. That is the searches that have led people to finding my blog as far as I can tell. It’s usually a funny little post that leaves me amused and baffled.
If you are interested, you can find the past years here:
- Stats I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours
- Stat of The Year!
- What Even is 2020 – My Year in Search Terms
You may have noticed that I’m a little late this year. What’s more, I’m not as giddy as usual. That’s because when I sat down to look over my searches for the year, I ended up a bit more uncomfortable than usual.
First, let’s get it out there. There have always always been hentai and pr0n searches that lead to my site regardless of the fact that I avoid leading tags and rarely discuss the subject. It’s still by far what generates the most interest on the internet and apparently in the anime community. I have occasionally thought of starting an ecchi/hentai blog and just watching the views roll in!
And I’ve largely made my peace with this. However, there was a new trend in 2021 that I’m confused about. The EXACT search term: chubby loli hentai was one of the most popular ones this year and when you factor in all the variations, like sexy chubby loli or the less tasteful iterations, it sort of trounces any other search term on my blog.
For my own peace of mind, I tried to do a little research and I believe most of these searches are leading to an old post I wrote called Anime is Turning Me Into A Chubby Chaser. It was a think piece about how different body types and silhouettes were slowly getting introduced into anime and how I thought it was a good thing. Basically, that variety in design leads to more interesting visuals and a better watching experience. There is no mention of hentai or loli anywhere in the post although one reader does use the word loli in the comments. That’s it.
Naturally, anyone searching the internet with the search term above and landing on my post is probably not amused. In fact, I figure they will browse through the pictures, realize this is not where they want to be and click right off. Hopefully, this will teach google’s algorithm to no longer suggest my post in those circumstances.
And if this was all there was to it, that would be fine. But it seems that this year, people only found my blog through searches of nude or naked characters, ecchi, hentai, sexy, hot or just disturbing niche fetishes. Aside from those searches, I have the ones that are simply the names of anime. Not really anything else.
Gone are the odd seemingly random word scrambles that I stared at in awe and tried to figure out. Gones are the more thoughtful searches that might have pointed to one of the posts I was really proud of and that could have been enjoyed by the reader. Heck, I don’t even have funny typos to tell you guys about.
And that makes me a little bummed out.
Now, I’m not sure how this came about. Is there something about my SEO that is putting me in a particular bracket or is it just that people were hornier last year? And I do realize that this post will be full of those words and likely lead to another spike in those specific searches but I’m hoping it won’t be enough to overshadow everything else.
The thing is, I don,t have enough information to figure this out on my own. I honestly don’t know how to make it more obvious to search engines that this blog is not dedicated to hentai. And I don,t even know if I have to. For those of you that have blogs, did your searches skew towards the sexy side in 2021? Cause if it’s the same for everybody, maybe that’s just what people were looking for and well, it says something about the effects of long-term lockdown but it might not have anything to do with my blog specifically.
On the other hand, if everyone else’s searches stayed the same or even showed an opposite trend, then I’m the one who’s doing something odd and I should try to figure out what.
I don’t think I’ve reviewed any particularly racy series this year. Of course, it could be older posts that are suddenly becoming more popular. Still, my site is rather bland compared to some of my contemporaries. I even censor my own swear words most of the time.
Or maybe I’m looking at the issue from the wrong side. Maybe it’s not that I’m attracting more sexy searches but rather that I’m no longer attracting the weird goofy searches and all that’s left are the sexy ones. That could be it. I have made an attempt at actual SEO putting in relevant and serious key phrases, trying to create decent meta descriptions and all that. I use to be much more carefree with these things and ironically, that may be what is weeding out the fun searches.
Have any of you noticed something similar on your blogs? And do you guys have any tips for getting those fun random searches back? I miss those. At the very least, I need to get the mullet searches back!
