The Things You Find in Your Blog's Logs...

Most of the time, a blogger's logs are a great tool for gauging the traffic for any given topic about which we may write. To this day, I bemoan the fact that the satiric piece I wrote about Anna Nicole Smith's death got far more pageviews than, say, the piece on the Most Popular Event in the World.

In rare instances, logs reveal more than we might expect. For a couple of weeks, I had noticed some strange Google queries that led someone to my page. I only gave it a cursory look, and didn't think much more of it.

Then Nigel Swaby posted the identities of frequent ExUrbanNation posters on his creepy "don't hate casey" blog. I spent most of the day thinking about how disturbing it was that someone with access to personal financial data had done that.

Later in the evening, I recalled those curious Google searches. I pulled up the logs and took a closer look. And sure enough, queries such as "Where does Aspeth live?" originated from Utah terrorities such as Salt Lake City.

While Nigel Swaby says that he only picked the 'low-lying fruit' through simple searches, there were numerous such queries within a three week period. Nigel Swaby spent a lot of time trying to track down the Haterz.

Some days, there were a dozen or more queries, trying to determine my age, address, phone number...any identifying information that would be useful. And these were just the searches I could see.

I emailed Rob Dawg and we had a brief exchange about Nigel Swaby's latest escapade with Casey Serin's critics. I'm sure that blogs like Housing Panic had similar searches.

Since the Google queries showed that *someone* in Utah (since it can't be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was Nigel Swaby) was also searching for the profiles of folks who had posted here, I made sure that my logs couldn't be accessed without passwords.

Obviously, the queries on those leaving comments here didn't turn up much. By and large, they weren't people who had a deep involvement in Casey Serin's story, or were people with fairly anonymous user names. Still, the creep factor remained.


Conversely, a blog's logs can also make you laugh. Nearly everyday, someone from a mental health facility in Utah Googles Nigel Swaby. This alone raises a world of possibilities.

It's been said before, but I'll reiterate it. Nigel Swaby will give his "expert" real estate and mortgage opinions at the drop of a hat. Personally, if I were a consumer shopping for a mortgage broker, I'd look for one who doesn't spend so much time playing on the internet.

A poster at ExUrb asked how Integrity First Financial's clients would feel about doing business with someone so willing to proffer personal information when he feels wounded. According to Nigel Swaby, when he told his boss about what he had done, his boss laughed and told him "happy traffic."

I guess that answers the question.