February was an interesting month here on the Sandbar blog.

This year I decided to start keeping track of various statistics here, like average visits in a month, total visits for the month, and the funny search words that people use to get here. I’ve talked about this a couple times; last month I told you what happened in January, and more recently when the blog hit a big milestone.

One of my recently-decided goals for 2008 is for visits to this site to increase each month. Even if it’s just by one visit, I’ll be happy. So far, two months into the year, that has happened.

In February, the blog had 833 visits. That’s an average of almost 29 per day! And even more importantly, it’s almost four more per day than in January. A year ago? February of 2007 only managed 439 visits for the entire month.

Once again, the most popular search term that sends people our way is "what happens during a hurricane." But there were lots of other funny hurricane-related searches:

  • What happens after a hurricane {the mermaids shake their tailfeathers on the bar}
  • Hurricane videos with no swearing {ours is surely the only one out there, doesn’t everybody swear when a hurricane is coming?}
  • Pictures of people that drank too many hurricanes {those can’t be pretty}

There were lots of searches about St. Patrick’s Day things:

  • St. Patrick’s Day Float Ideas {we can definitely help with that}
  • St. Patrick’s Day controversy {to be on the float…or to be at the bar…}
  • St. Patrick’s Day obscure fact {we don’t know any of those, not sure why they were directed here.}

And mermaids were a popular search, too:

  • Topless mermaids {I created a monster with this post}
  • Mermaids with no bra {apparently we’re the go-to source for this}
  • About the full moon what happens to mermaids {huh?}
  • Various searches about mermaid costume, mermaid wall decor, mermaid painting, and my favorite…
  • Scary mermaid picture {see the link above for topless mermaids, that ought to do it.}

Lots of people were searching for Sandbar stuff:

  • Sandbar webcam
  • Sandbar Lawrence
  • Sandbar Ottawa
  • Sandbar downtown
  • Sandbar wax

And apparently they weren’t always looking for our favorite Sandbars, as people searched for them in other locations too:

  • Sandbar Long Beach NY
  • Sandbar Costa Rica
  • Sandbar in AZ
  • Sandbar NYC
  • Sandbar London
  • Sandbar Clemson

Coconut bras and all things LandShark Lager– merchandise, pictures, video, stuff, apparel, artwork, facts- were popular too. And several people were also looking for Dave. Probably ex-girlfriends.

Here are some of my other favorites from February:

  • people making out at the Sandbar in Lawrence {this actually showed up twice!}
  • Frank Wiles {is there something you need to tell us? Why are people hunting you?}
  • bars just outside of Columbia, MO
  • photo op cut outs
  • Tippy cup shirts
  • Jayhawk panty
  • pictures of Go Sanbar Bug (horse)

I plan to make this a regular feature at the end of every month.