Blog Stats after 6 years

From November 2010

Image from Wordle applet

When Aleah turned 6 a few weeks ago, I realized it had been some time since I have written here. Between work and laziness, I have not spent a lot of time writing.

I was surprised to see some of the changes in blogger when I logged in that show stats on number of visitors etc. Apparently, this blog has had 1838 page views since June of 2010. Now that isn't near as many as wildly popular blogs (I like Roger Ebert's blog and Orangette are two I frequent. I don't know how many people visit their blogs a day, but each post gets hundreds of responses so it has to be huge), but I am surprised that there are that many eyes looking at my blog.

The majority of visitors to this blog still go to my post about Riverbend. I still don't know what happened to her, but I wish I did. Apparently people all around the world are still thinking about her enough to google her and visit my blog occasionally.

The next most popular post was Chicken Killers. The other posts are about equal in number of visitors. The reason these are higher I suspect is that if you search the phrases in the titles my blog comes up in the top number of links on google. I have gotten the most comments on posts about political issues, books, and my visit with my Dad in Hawaii.

Of those 1838 page hits, a bunch of them are me as I compulsively check my blog for comments. I have a widget that lets me see where visitors to the blog are from and I can piece together some of visitors to this blog. Many are friends or family from Texas, Utah, Indiana, or Boise as our lives have drawn us away and scattered us across the planet. But, for the rest of you, please let me know you were here and leave me a comment, even if I don't know you.

Because, unlike Facebook that is presumably only visible to Facebook-Friends (and any commercial entities that mine those relationships for ad revenue) this blog is open to the world, and I like that. This last year my use of Facebook has increased and my blog posts have decreased to only 17 so far this year. Part of that is I have felt my life in a crazy-busy routine and part of it is laziness that Facebook appeals to. I can write 20 words instead of an open letter to the world. I can peruse my "friends" in just minutes, but it isn't the same as a blog. It has been nice to reconnect with old friends that way and it feels more like a conversation than this blog has. On the whole, I prefer this medium. My virtual door is open to visitors that can drop in and say hello. Just like my own home, except if you visit in person I can promise pie.