March Stats

A few months ago, I decided to add a StatCounter as so to keep a better running count of visitors than the Feedjit Counter. Google Analytics seems to do a decent job, but I wanted to check those figures against another site counter.  StatCounter sends a monthly total, too, where as I have to go to Google to view the numbers.   I'm lazy, what can I say?

I also am not obsessed with the numbers, but just find them interesting.  I *might* be obsessed if this blog got thousands of hits each day, but....

As I have mentioned before, I was a little disappointed that page loads does not equal visitors.  (I thought this blog was more popular than it actually is.  Wishful thinking, I guess.) The new StatCounter keeps up with those, but it also counts first time visits as well as returning visits.  I have it set to ignore my own visits to the blog, but have to reset it when I clear cache and cookies. (the counter is "hidden" in the right-hand nav bar in the box at the very bottom. It's not actually hidden, but I have it set to a tiny size as so to not be so obvious to the casual visitor.)

Here's a screen shot of last month's stats:

Surprising Snake Spike

I had noticed an increase in traffic when I checked in Wednesday; most of the new visitors were coming from two different website forums that linked to the post Rattlesnakes in Palo Duro Canyon.

I kept an eye on the Feedjit Feed but unless I want to count each visitor, I had to wait until the Flag Counter totaled up the day in the early evening(around six p.m., i think)  I was semi-shocked to see that the blog traffic had tripled the average.

Usually when this pathetic excuse for a blog sees such a "large" increase in traffic, it's because Cast Away aired somewhere in the world.

I signed up for Google's AdSense a few years ago, but never followed through with the process.  I always figured the hassle to me and the extra loading time for my visitors wouldn't be worth the dollar a month - or less - I'd make from the few dozen visitors I get each day. 

While this blog doesn't get all that much traffic, the Flag Counter says that 169 different countries have visited. While most visitors are from the U.S., followed by the U.K. I did notice there had been one visitor from Iceland.  One visitor...and they, like most of the others, never came back.

About That Time Again

I was looking at this blog's Flag Counter the other day and viewing the yearly graph, I was reminded that April Fool's Day is coming up.

For the last couple of years, I've linked to the Google blog and their annual April Fool's joke and it had a trackback and people saw the link and came here.

I'm sure they were disappointed.

This blog averages around 50 unique visitors every day, 80 on a "good" day.  Now and then the count tops 100-150, but that's rare.  They mostly arrive from search engines, looking for gay dwarfs, sister's feet or other things I'm sure they meant to find but didn't...at least not anything applicable to their original intent. 

There are quite a few hits from people searching for Duane Chapman (Dog the Bounty Hunter) or for a particular vehicle I just happened to photograph at a car show.  Some come for videos, but often YouTube has taken them down.  That's probably a visitor that will never come back here, but I can't help that.  I always wonder why they don't search YouTube, but on the other hand, sometimes the comments after the video might be what brings them in. My friends, family and regular readers are sometimes enthused by a certain video and Google or other search engines has their comments in the results.

Many come from different parts of the world when the movie Cast Away is shown, and I'd bet the other spikes in visits shown in the above graphic are from that.  ToTG is near the top in most types of searches for that movie.

My claim to fame. -sigh-

No matter the reason they arrive here, I appreciate the traffic...even though I don't have any paying ads. I don't validate my self-worth by the hits on my blog, but the interest does make it seem worthwhile.   I also appreciate my online friends, my family members and loyal readers who do stop by and laugh at an old fool just foolin' around all year long.

Ahoy, There Be Pirates!

Arrr!

Just checked my counter stats and saw this for the latest visitor:

Note the date of the last visit - wonder if Columbus visited this blog then, too?

(and no, this isn't an April Fools joke - not by me, anyway.  Sure wish I knew how they did that.)