Internet Beat by Gloria R. Rivera

What words do people look for when they use the search engine at seguin.net?

Since I have access to the day to day, weekly and monthly reports of the words and phrases searched by visitors to seguin.net, I thought it might be interesting to share.

What are the top words or phrases that people looked for as they used the search engines at seguin.net, in November and December, for example?

The top word, by far, is Seguin.

Next comes Real Estate, realtors

Then, the newspaper and the radio, Gazette, Seguin Gazette and kwed, newspaper classifieds

Then, jobs, employment, and job openings

Then, hotels, motels

Apartments, rentals, rental homes

Chamber

Pecans

Hastings

King Ranger

Goetz Funeral Home, funeral home

Seguin High School, stadium

Churches

Downtown maps

Hospitals, home health care

Animals

Land for sale

Music

Water

Arts and Crafts

Austin Street Live

The Public Library Foundation

Campbell log cabin

Juan Seguin

Smith

Coleta Byrd

Joseph Dibrell

King

Geronimo

School

There are several search engines at seguin.net, which allow access to information available not only at seguin.net, but information offered at the following websites: the City of Seguin, the Seguin Chamber of Commerce, seguinonline, the Seguin Gazette newspaper and the KWED radio. The information available for searching at seguin.net includes not only the main pages, but other web pages including the History of Seguin “Under the Live Oak Tree” by John Gesick, the Internet Beat articles since 1996, True Women Virtual Tour, the Mid Texas Symphony, The Public Library Foundation, King Ranger Theatres, etc.

The monthly cumulative number of searches is about 700, with at least 500 different words and phrases....

It is also interesting to observe that the search for words of a while back and the current search are not very different.

Some of the searches of course are seasonal, like searching for RV parks when it is Summer, or for traditional events such as Market Days, County Fair, etc.

Sometimes the words searched are related to the current news, such as when there was a high profile case of a missing person from Houston. Also, there were many searches for Rio Nogales when the construction of the plant started in full swing.

Other times, it is organizations, such as the Girl Scouts. Yet other times, people are looking for someone living in Seguin, or for information about the schools and businesses in Seguin. There are also searches for Texas Lutheran University. The variety of words and phrases searches is almost infinite: doctors, entertainment, movies, calendar events, maps, utilities, election results, sporting events that include participants from other communities, etc.

I regret to say that sometimes there have been searches for words that imply dark purposes, but I am glad that such searches don’t yield information. The searchers of such material can’t find anything in the Seguin websites that the search engines at seguin.net search. However, such searches always remind me of the need to always be vigilant about predators that unfortunately do use the Internet for their dark purposes. The Internet is a great tool for providing useful information that people need, but it can also be used by predators and we need to constantly protect the children.

Knowing in detail the kind of information that people look for and the results of their searches, also contained in the reports that I have access to, helps me to understand the needs of the visitors and to meet their needs.

Making use of the powerful reach of search engine capability that can index not only the content in seguin.net http://www.seguin.net , I enjoy offering search engine access to diversified information offered in other websites about Seguin, such as the City http://www.ci.seguin.tx.us/ , the Chamber http://www.chamber.seguinonline.com/ , Seguinonline http://www.seguinonline.com/, the newspaper http://web.seguingazette.com/news.lasso , the radio http://www.kwed.com , etc.

The net effect is the promotion of our wonderful community, Seguin!

If you would like to contribute an article to the Internet Beat, contact Gloria R. Rivera at webmaster@seguin.net