Site Metrics Unveiled

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Hey, everyone! I thought I'd clue you in on what's been going on around here, because it's pretty fantastic!

The other day, I discovered that Google now includes a modest suite of site-metrics for Blogger.com websites! Outstanding! I've been reviewing them, and you'd be shocked and amazed at what I've found.

For one, I get visitors from all over the world. The bulk are from the USA, of course, but a suprising number come from elsewhere. Canada, The United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Romania, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Latvia, Chile, Ghana, and New Zealand all generate a surprising amount of traffic.

Another surprise was that 50% of my visitors use IE, 28% use Firefox, and the remainder are made up of the usual suspects (Safari, Chrome, and Opera), but with a couple surprises, such as Java and Netscape. The real shock, though, was the operating systems and the way the numbers have changed over the past few months.

87% of visitors use Windows, and 6% use Mac. What about the other 7%? I was SHOCKED. SHOCKED, I tell you!

The iPhone users made up over 1/3 of the bulk, and another third went to "Other" Unix. Making up the remaining 2% of my visitors are users of the iPad, Linux, Playstation, BlackBerry, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo Wii.

Wow! People are visiting my site with GAME MACHINES and PHONES!

I love it!

Thank you all!

Over time, though, the statistics have changed markedly. The stats above are all-time numbers since Google started doing this back in May. In the past 30 days (as of right now), 8% fewer people have used Firefox and 7% more have used IE to visit me. 2% fewer people used Windows, and, get this: IPhone users outnumbered Mac users! Both had 5% of the visits, but there were a few extra iPhone users.

And in the past 7 days, 66% of visitors did so with IE, and only 13% used Firefox. 88% used Windows, and Mac and iPhone both tied at 4%.

That's pretty cool!

It also tells me what the most popular search terms are, where people come from, and which pages are visited most frequently. I was a bit surprised at the results, especially since the most used search term to reach me was the name of a guy I've only used once on the site. I suppose I shouldn't be, since everyone wants to know who he is and there's nothing out there to tell you what kind of a guy he is and whether he's as dangerous as you've probably heard. Since I'm not interested in propping up his career, I'm not going to mention it now. Maybe later. I can tell you that if you google for him, this site is high on the results list.

Which articles are most popular? Probably the one you came in on, since 90% of you are coming for four articles, but staying to read everything else. I'll have more of those topics for you in the future!

When I first came here to Google Blogger, I set up all kinds of helpful cross-linking tools: categories, archiving, and so on, but apparently that wasn't enough, so I just recently added a few links to the end of many articles to direct traffic elsewhere. I didn't restrict these cross-links to similar topics, because I have a plethora of things here worth reading, because I read about a plethora of things. I still saw a corresonding increase in traffic, so I'll be using this tool more often, and now that I've got 80 articles, I'll be able to link up related posts more often and we'll see how well that does for the traffic. I spent a few hours editing articles to add these links in.

The only thing left is to start getting more active participation. I do occasionally get emails, but not many comments or votes or followers. And I do get the occasional PERSONAL comment, like from a friend who reads it. Only a handful of people have bought something through one of my Amazon links, but that's all it takes to pay for this place.

Thank you, to those of you who have helped me out, and thank you to those who will continue to do so. Here are a few things for you to consider buying, and then some other articles to check out.
















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