Monday, November 10, 2008

Statistics

I used to hate statistics. When I was doing my accountancy exams it was always the papers which included statistics which would trip me up and require a resit. I got there in the end but still didn't really understand statistics well.

Nowadays though, I love the tiny stats meters on the bottom of my blog. Sometime last week a milestone of 20,000 hits was passed on the Bravenet counter at the bottom and it tells me how many visitors are new and how many are returning. My sitemeter tells me all sorts of interesting information about visitors, especially the time of a visit, their geographical location and where they have come from on the web.

In the last week alone I have had many visitors from the UK of course, but also lots from the USA, and others from Canada, France, Korea, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Pakistan, Russia, Germany, Greece, Dubai UAE, and Thailand.

It is also interesting to see what brings people here from Google. Obviously the mention of something very topical, especially a name, brings extra hits. But searches which I see coming up time and time again include agoraphobia, essay stress, read it and weep (a Disney Channel movie I believe) and most of all celebrities and autism.

Fascinating stuff.

Three notable things:

1. Son 2 tore pages out of the back of one of my study books yesterday. Eeek.

2. The new Starbucks limited edition Dark Cherry Mocha is delicious. I am tempted to go back into town today just to have another one.

3. I've bought a much-needed new pair of boots, so I am all set up for winter now.

7 comments:

Lane Mathias said...

Blog stats are fascinating. Statistics? Not so much:-)

Glad you're all booted for the winter.

Jenny Beattie said...

Yup, what Lane said.

And boots... oooh, I know you'd rather be wearing my flip flops, but I'm really jealous of you all wearing boots.

Anonymous said...

I hated stats to, I did it through both science degrees and again (with specialist training) when I worked in genetics and it was only when I had to do it for work did I get how to do it, I never truly liked it though. Whereas my blog stats, always far more interesting reading ;) Currently I seem to be the place to come for Iggle Piggle pictures and I always wonder exactly how many pages of Google must someone have gone through to get to my blog using the search term 'embroidery'!

Chris Stovell said...

Congrats on visitors (see, I'm getting up to speed now I've got by NR blog roll in place!). New boots - sigh! - I have boot enjy.

Anonymous said...

It is interesting to look at stats but I fear a lot of them are not really accurate.

Hope you've managed to salvage the pages!

CJ xx

Cathy said...

Lane :)

JJ..yes I'd rather be in flipflops than needing boots for this cold rain!

Lacer- Iggle Piggle?Is that his latest obsession?

Chrish...well done on getting the blogroll sorted, good to see you here again.

CJ...I agree that blog stats are not entirely accurate, my two conters are not consistent with each other.But the stats are still fun to look at and at least I know some of it is true as I can spot JJ and Liz's visits from overseas. Didn't manage to salvage the pages, he had shredded them, so I will be getting a new book from the OU!

HelenMWalters said...

Mmm, the dark cherry mocha sounds lurvely!