by Karl Kurtz
Nearly 40 percent of all hits to The Thicket come from search engines--people seeking information and finding it in our blog. We're proud of that statistic because it means that we're spreading the word and providing a service about things state legislative.
Our blogging software (Typepad) allows us to see the questions that people pose in their search engines (but not their identity). I check a lot of these because it's useful to track what readers want to know. I'm often pleased that I can tell that searchers get exactly the information they want by clicking on The Thicket. For example, "how many women governors," which leads to our posting by that name from two years ago, is easily the most frequently asked question that produces hits to The Thicket.
But then again, occasionally it's clear that searchers don't get what they want, sometimes because of their own mistakes. Yesterday a searcher got to the posting, "Alaska has Gubernatorial Succession Covered" by googling "Alaska succession from the Union." Secession, succession, who cares about spelling? Dear reader, here's one of the hits you probably wanted instead of the one you got in The Thicket.
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