Occasionally I look at my Site Meter statistics, which I find mildly interesting. My blog doesn't get hundreds of readers a day - only about 130 at the moment - but since I've started posting daily, my monthly total has gone up from about 2500 in October to over 4000 in January.Now of course these aren't 4000 individual people, but 4000 clicks. How many people does this add up to? - I've no idea. I suppose that I'm aware of about 30? maybe 35? commenters but there are obviously other people out there idly reading about my thrilling life. (Some of them are my family.) I suppose that most of the daily 130 are separate individuals and that not everyone looks every day so that there are probably more than 130 people keeping vague tabs on the cats, Grandson and how things are in Edinburgh. But has the number of readers gone up, or just the number of times the usual ones get bored at work and think, oh well, I'll just have a look at that blog about cats and a baby? Probably the latter, I'd think.
Some of those in the statistics will have stumbled on my blog by mistake. Any time that I look at the entry pages, I find that several people have landed on a blog post entitled "Learning and teaching". Clearly some poor souls are Googling this phrase and hoping to find educational value through their search. I can't recall what the post's about but it's certainly nothing useful: it's something frivolous. Sorry, searchers for enlightenment - though of course they'll have clicked crossly away from that post and won't be reading this.
It's a funny old phenomenon, this blogging thing. I love it - words travelling round the world to communicate with those one will probably never meet - even if, in many (most) cases, the communication is one-way. Still, it is communication. (Hello.) It's strange that so many of us feel the urge to do it. And interesting that, presumably, it fills a need that we weren't really aware of. Or were we? It makes me happy that so many people must love to write but had no real outlet for this before; no one to write for. And now they do.
HeyHeyHey -- Sometimes they DO meet! And in my experience, it's Fabulous! ;-D
ReplyDeleteI read your blog on Google Reader - I never know if they count as clicks on your stats or not. My all-time highest post for hits was where I made my son a Moshling bag - given Moshlings are the exclusive province of seven year olds my quilting blog is probably the cause of much disappointment.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea whether this is fact or not, but I have a sneaky suspicion that if I have left any blogs 'open' when I put my computer into 'sleep' mode, when I re-open, fresh contact is made. I can see that the Internet connection closes down, and I have to wait a few seconds for re-connection, so I presume that means a re-connection to the sites I was looking at? Would that count as two visits?
ReplyDeleteI don't tend to do this very often, because we have Windows Vista Business, and it does not seem to like carrying forward any open sites, especially if they use any sort of flash player.
If I am confusing or multiplying your stats - sorry!
Perhaps blogging appeals to those who like a glimpse of other people's lives? We're all a bit curious by nature.
ReplyDeleteHello back to you ! :)
ReplyDeleteWhen you write, I sometimes feel I am living your life :)
All these computer mysteries are very confusing. It would be good to have a live-in expert. There is so much to fail to understand. Site meter is a mystery to me. One of these days I will have some personal tuition. Have just wrestled with lack of internet on the newer computer and then crossed to the old one to find it was working. How can this be? Just thinking about it makes me want to curl up with a good book!
ReplyDeleteHello. I am not a usual reader of your blog, I clicked here from Quilting Orchardist's site, which I follow. I stopped looking at my stats because I "thought" I was getting 20+ readers but it turned out to be a spambot. Quite disappointing. I love to browse blogs randomly, I have found many interesting writers I would never had heard of. I must be missing many more! You would have to travel the world over and never stop, to "meet" so many diverse people...and who can afford that? Internet is wonderful. Yours, Gina in the USA
ReplyDeleteI gave up getting excited about the site meter stats. And I admit I often have to make a couple of visits before I decide what to say in my comment.
ReplyDeleteI do like to check on the blogger stats site, though, for where my audience is from. Not surprisingly, the most are from US with almost half that number from Canada, then half again from UK and half again from Australia.
I am disappointed that no-one visits from SA.
I read you every day and always looks forward to it. Always enjoy it, babies, cats Edinburgh and all.
ReplyDeleteI check all of my favs everyday. I don't recall how I stumbled onto your site, most likely from another site. I like to visit, but since most of my life is working (No kids, no spouse, a very boring cat who only sleeps, eats and catches mice) I get my excitement from visiting new places and seeing how others live their lives. I was seriously considering your week in Edenborugh offer, but not sure if I could arrange everything, so I just dropped it. It would have been wonderful, though. But I learn from your trips. Oh yes, in Pennsylvania USA we have the groundhog to predict the weather, and he told us today that we have six more weeks of winter. I hope he is wrong.
ReplyDeleteHello, I am a lurker. I read your blog everyday. I enjoy hearing about your cats and children and grandchildren. I live in Texas and love to be able to travel to your neck of the woods some day.
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