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Every once in a while I think it's fun to publish some stats...who's visiting, what are they looking for, etc. I don't write for a specific audience, but I do enjoy watching to see who's watching. It doesn't really affect what I write, but there are times when I update and think, "So-and-so will love this," or "I hope So-and-so doesn't read this, it'll really cheese him off." Not to worry, I can't actually see who is out there. I just see locations and those are often misleading since your internet service provider is probably located in an entirely different city from you. Still, some certainty is possible. I know that, as of today, 43% of you are Americans and 40% are Canadian. Those numbers tend to switch about, with as much as 50% Canadian at times. I usually get around 1% each from The UK, France, Australia and (oddly) the United Arab Emirates. I suspect an overseas American solider is checking in, and that happens to be where the ISP is located. Howdy! God guard you and may you come home safe and soon. I also get a lot of hits from Brazil, which I understand is a pretty net-happy country. Right now I happen to have one visit each from Uruguay, India, South Africa and Mauritius. While those are less common visitors, these aren't the first hits I've had from those countries. My all-time list of visiting countries...
Although the U.S. currently logs more visits, Canadians do so from a more concentrated location. Toronto tops the list of visits from one city, at 27%, and Ontario generates 35% of all hits. The next highest is Delaware, Ohio, with 9% of visits. I suspect I have one very regular reader in Ohio. Only 3% of my visits come from Wisconsin (they really miss me, I guess) and only 1% from Milwaukee. These numbers are a bit misleading, though, since some hits come from ISP's that I know to be Wisconsin-based but which register as coming from Texas. Oy. Around 15% of all visitors never even see my blog, as they come for the bird watching page. My site is the top listing on Google for "bird watching High Park" and number three for "bird watching Toronto," though these positions change with the day's traffic. Also popular is my Canadian Guide for Americans Abroad, which gets about 10% of my traffic, mostly from Canada. Just over 5% of visitors hit my schedule of psalms according to the Rule of St. Benedict, usually by searching for something like "division of Psalms". Another 4% lands on my Canadian Tire Guy Fan Club. Google sends me 95% of search-generated hits, while Yahoo! manages just 5%. That number fluctuates wildly, since only 20% of all hits are from searches. The rest of you either link from another site (usually another blogger, often one I've linked over on the right) or have me bookmarked. A couple of users consistently find my page by Googling "www.aaronorear.com", which is funny since you can just type that into the URL field. To each his own. It's hard to pin down links from other pages, mostly because it changes so much. Right now a lot of hits are coming from the comment sections of other blogs, which reminds me of something my grandmother told me...or was it my mum? Anyhow, the point is, "If you want to get letters, you have to send letters." In web parlance this means that if you want to get hits, you have to leave comments. 55% of you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, and a couple of you use versions 5.0 or 7.0. La de da. Firefox is the next most popular, with 27% using some version, mostly 1.5.0. Safari has 9% of the share, while Netscape has 6% spread over three versions. And now the stat that geeks everywhere drool for...80% of users are running Windows XP (plus 1% still cranking along with Windows 98) while just 10% use Mac OS X. A full 8% register as "Unknown," which I suppose is probably Linux or some variety. A final observation...on days when I update before noon, my hits almost double. Perhaps a lot of you are getting your blog fix over lunch? Sundays are my lowest traffic day, Wednesday and Thursday are highest...assuming I update that day or post comments or there's a rush for news about birds in High Park. So there you are, broken down into numbers. And now you know what I do with my spare time... |
