Arabeyes: A Closer Look at Readers · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Over the past month, several Arab bloggers have been taking a closer look at who follows their blogs and what keywords bring readers. Here's a review of what bloggers from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt had to say.
Bahrain:
After checking her statistics, and seeing who was accessing her blog, Silly Bahraini Girl goes on a rampage in a post entitled Arab Perverts.
She explains:
It really is a shame that some of us – yes – I happen to be an Arab too – have access to the Internet.
Curiosity may have killed the cat – but it certainly made my stomach turn – and I sure do have one of the most colourful vocabularies out there. Anyway, I just had a look at what leads the majority of clicks to this blog, and here's the result. These are the 250 top keywords which drew traffic to my blog. Makes me think if I should hang up my boots and open a brothel. Why am I even bothering myself blogging, promoting blogging and lecturing to people about how it gives them a voice?
She then goes on to list the 250 most searched for words on her blog.
Saudi Arabia:
From Saudi, American Bedu also shares her thoughts on how she reacts to readers. She explains:
In addition to simply sharing the realities and experiences of day-to-day life in the Kingdom, I also rely on an analysis of the search terms that led readers to my blog in the first place.  This is one of the advantages in using WordPress as a blog platform.  For a non-techie like me it is quite easy to use and manage.  Plus it provides you routinely with daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly statistics.  I not only know how many individuals have viewed my blog each day but what posts they are reading.  In addition, as I stated in the beginning of this post, I also receive a log of daily search terms which lead readers to my blog.  Sometimes I will view the search terms and realize especially with repeated terms searched, I should do a post on a particular subject due to the ongoing level of interest.  At other times I may see a search term and wonder what on earth made the search engine come up with a reference to my blog for that term!
Lebanon:
After discovering that 20 per cent of his readers were attracted by a post on Lebanese pop star Haifa Wehbe, Antoun, from Lebanon, decided to fight fire with fire, adding more pictures of Lebanon's hottest stars to his blog. He explains:
It has occurred to me that at least 20% of the hits I get a day, thus far, are from horny individuals (men, and surely some women) looking for pictures of Haifa Wehbe, due to this post I made last week about Haifa Wehbe and political Islam. I will share with you some of the word strings used on Google that allowed these horndogs to stumble upon my blog:
* haifa wahbi, sex
* f****d pics for haifa wehbe
* best photo of haifa
* picture sex haifa
Well, you get the picture. But rather than to be discouraged about my blog becoming a portal for those eager to find pictures of haifa+wehbe+sex rather than a meeting point for informed insight about Lebanon and regional issues, I've decided to put up a few more pictures of Haifa. I've also added a picture of Nancy Ajram and Elissa. Sometimes, the means justify the ends. If I can attract readers with these theatrics, maybe they'll stay a while to do some browsing.
Egypt:
D B Shobrawy from Egypt too was looking at what attracts readers to his blog and after seeing that his most ‘delicious’ post to date has been snubbed, decides to publish it again. Shobrawy explains his move as follows:
Sometimes I will go through my sites visitor statistics to see what people are reading and how they got to the site. Today I was glancing around and I saw the usual, recent posts, The Battle for Hummus and Falafel, Hot Egyptian Girls and any post involving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I spotted another post that hadnt been that hot of a search topic but one of my favorite posts, dare I say one of the best? I read it today as if someone else wrote it and I loved it. I’m reposting it again for those who might have missed it.