The Stat Man

Just a couple of weeks ago I signed up good ol' Flying Winnebago on sitemeter.com. It's a site Mikey turned me onto, and the best part of it is it's completely free. Sitemeter lets me see stats such as the number of hits this blog gets on a daily basis, weekly basis, the number of hits per hour, and the referral sites for the visitors. The referrals might be the most interesting since it lets me see how some random person out there in internet land happens upon my blog. For example, I noticed yesterday that I got a visit from someone in Pittsburgh, and found out that he googled in the words "road trip to pnc park" into a search, and my posting about the burgers and Pennsylvania trip were #4 in his search results.

It turns out that a lot more people stop by here on a daily basis that I ever would have imagined. It's at about a 70 per day average. To some that might not seem like much, but before sitemeter, I just figured there were probably a few friends back in Ohio, and a few people from the T2V message board checking in regularly. Although that still might be the case, it also tells me that WAY more random people out of nowhere stumble upon my blog than I thought.

What sitemeter does NOT tell me are the exact names of people who visit. I can see your location city, time of visit, what pages you visit, your length of stay and your referral. Every once in a while it tells me some server information, which usually results when someone checks in from their work computer. For example, for the mystery person that visits my blog from Bowling Green, Ohio and has the "Bowling Green State Univesity" listing next to your domain name, I pretty much know who you are! ;-) See you in April man!

My visitors are almost exclusively American. A couple of notable exceptions are some regulars who show up from Ruinen Drenthe the Netherlands, Ridderkerk Zuid-Holland the Netherlands, Vancouver Canada, and London. My brilliant powers of deduction tell me that the loyal reader from the Netherlands is most probably "DutchVegas".

Some other cities that pop up on a very frequent basis are:

Stow, Ohio (is that you Jay?)
Sandusky, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Toledo, Ohio
Ann Arbor, Michigan (hmmm, a reader from enemy territory)
Tulsa, OK
St. Paul, MN
Pasadena, TX
Pheonix, AZ (Stogie?)
Kansas City, MO
Lake Orion, Michigan (where my aunt and uncle used to live)
Delmar, NY
Alpharetta, GA
Baytown, TX
and a couple towns in Illinois who I suspect is Marty!

Sorry if I've forgotten a few regulars (well, their cities at least), but I can only see the locations for the previous 24 hours and I'm having trouble remembering if there are any that I regularly see that didn't visit yesterday.

Because of this new found knowledge, I am having trouble quelling the temptation to change my blogging habits. One thing I refuse to do is try to force out postings just for the hell of it for the simple fact of giving my buddy from Stow something new to look at every morning. I'm still going to keep on track and post around 2-4 times a week. And I'll still post what I just happen to feel like posting about, instead of intentionally trying to cater to what I think the regulars want to see. I do realize that some of you tune in hoping to hear stories from behind the felt, but sometimes work is better left at work!

So a very hearty thank you goes out to EVERYONE who reads this!! I hope you still continue to check in, and tell your friends if I happen to put a smile on your face on occasion.