Search Term Solicitations

A convenient feature of standard wordpress.com blogs is the stats page. It shows a wealth of traffic information — how many page visits you get in a day, what posts people viewed the most, the links that were clicked on. I’ve spent many an hour* looking around that stat page.

One of the more interesting features is the Search Engine Terms section. It shows the search terms that people typed to get to your site. Some are standard, mundane searches. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I get many searches for The Blood of the Horde by Tooth. Others are just plan strange — the search “oh no im a horse” leads me to wonder what, exactly, they were searching for in the first place.

However, some searches are not just random. They are a search that are asking a specific question, or at least are alluding to a question that could be answered. Perhaps you could call them… search term solicitations**.

And since these searches made it to my blog for one reason or another, I might as well try to answer them to the best of my knowledge. So I’m starting a hopefully permanent series of posts*** that will attempt to answer search term questions.

The Case of the Missing Dragon

The first Search Term Solicitation I decided to tackle is the one that prompted me to start writing this post. A month or so ago, I started seeing searches such as these popping up every now and then:

• what happend to cielstrasza
• can’t find cielstrasza
• cielstrasza gone
• cielstrasza missing

It didn’t take me long to realize how these searches got to my blog. I had written an RP-post with Cielstrasza, the Wyrmrest Accord Quartermaster, in it some time ago. But I wasn’t sure why people couldn’t find her. As far as I knew, she was still on top of the tower in Dragonblight. In fact, I checked the standard WoW information sites, and nothing mentioned that she had moved.

Cielstrasza

So I paid little mind to these searches, thinking that it was just one or two people who for some reason couldn’t find the information Cielstrasza elsewhere.

Except that the searches kept coming.

I became suspicious.

“Alright, self,” I thought to myself in a tough-guy detective voice, “there’s some funny business going on here.” I made a mental note to check it out.

—

A few weeks passed and I happened to be in Dragonblight to do a guild OS run.**** I made a quick flight up to the top of the tower (as I was the first one there — thank you, Kirin Tor Ring!) to check out Cielstrasza… and this is what I saw.

Can YOU find the rep vendor in this picture?

No? Take another look.*****

There she is!

“Ah ha! That’s why some folks are having trouble finding her — it’s because of one of those silly guards standing in the wrong place!” I thought to myself triumphantly.

Some of you may remember this happening before to Lord Afrasastrasz, the daily quest giver on the midlevel. It seems that whatever caused the guards to spawn on him is contagious.

So there you have it — Cielstrasza is hiding under a dragon-type guard. Just look for her feet!

Konclusion and Kitty

That’s the end of this Search Term Solicitation — hopefully there will be more in the future!

And to break up the exciting finale to “The Case of the Missing Dragon” from the footnotes I couldn’t help but add in, please enjoy these pictures of our still as yet unnamed kitty.

Kitty demands pettings.

Kitty still wants pettings.

Stretch!

* Not an hour all at once though. In fact, even my total might not be ‘many an hour’. But ‘many a minute’ sounds silly.

** Title worked into blog post? Check.

*** Unlike all those other series of posts that haven’t become series yet.

**** Drakes for all!

***** You answered yes, you say? Did you cheat and look at the lower picture? If not, you win a gold star!