A Thousand hits, but who are you all?

I put a stat counter on this site a couple of months ago and today I see reached the first landmark, a thousand hits. Some people spend hours analysing their statistics. Which country? Who referred them? How long were they on there for? Well that’s all well and good, but having spent the last five years analysing data from nine till five I resisted that temptation on this occasion. Anyway who needs a computer to tell you this? I can tell you right now how you got your traffic. I’m developing this complex methodology that I'm planning to roll out to all people who write blogs. You don’t need to install it in the html code of your blog, you don’t need to pay any monthly fees and it will be completely invisible to all your blog visitors so they don’t have to see if you are a five digit guru or a two digit loser.

Where all your hits came from..................

Tell your friend hits

Whilst talking about the week you have just had with your friends at the pub, you mention your blog. They look at you as if you are ill, thinking it is some illness that’s far too embarrassing to give a real name to, so you have invented one instead. When you tell them what it is they look even more confused. They don’t say it, but they might as well open their mouth and say “But why would you do that?”

Statistically this will provide 0.5% of your traffic. The geographical location will be eighty miles away. It is them, it’s just their ISP is there, no you have not got any new admirers from a new city. They will have a return visit rate of 1, and that’s only after you said you were putting up the photos from last night up on the site.


Include your blog address on your email address hits

The initial hit trend will be high after forwarding a funny email to your friends. This will be for three reasons. Firstly, they will think that the site will be related to funny picture that you sent, only to be incredibly disappointed when they reach your blog. Secondly, they see ‘blog’ in the title and your name, curiosity will get the better of them and they will take a look. Again I can see the disappointment on their faces now. Thirdly, the people that you send jokes to are normally bored and depressed at work. This means they will have nothing better to do than take a look at your musings, your blog will make them feel better about their lives.

Statistically after a high hit rate, people will realise what the link really is. There will always be two regular hitters after that, the time trends will normally show 4.50pm on a Friday.

WARNING: It is not advised that you include your blog address as your email footer. Potential employers will not see it favourably if they read your blog and then see that you are applying for jobs to make you feel better.



Random surfer hits

These are normally generated by the people clicking the ‘next blog’ random button. This can happen for a number of reasons. The main one being boredom. There is a certain amount of intrigue at what other people are writing which can cause the random button to be activated.

Statistically these hits will only last for a second. People are very difficult to please these days. If they don’t like the colour, the music, the title or the first sentence of the blog then they will hit the ‘next’ button quicker than then the ‘next’ button when Microsoft say ‘do you want to register now or later?’. Don’t expect these people to come back, after all they were just randomly looking because they were bored at that moment in time.


People who look at your site to get return hits themselves hits

Yes, it’s true. Some people examine their stats religiously and think that other people do to. If you see a referring blog site in your stats, you will look at that blog to see who has been looking at your site.

Statistically you will get very few hits from this. Most people will not have a stat counter and most people could not be bothered where their hits cam from or not rendering this one pretty useless.


Search Engine hits

If ever there was a reason to have a stat counter then this is it. Is it because you want to analyse what parts of your blog people are looking at? Well sort of. It’s more to do with the disappointment factor of potential searchers. Having been to Thailand I had to write about Ladyboy’s. Of course this was in a strictly educational sense. However it seems some people out there are actively searching for very strange combinations. I can guarantee you that whatever you are writing now, Google will try and make up something using your words to make it a lot more appealing to certain users. Take this for exaple search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=ladyboy%20botom%pincher%20how%much%cost

Statistically these hits are quite low. If you wanted to increase your hit rate you could try by putting seemingly innocent words in the same article so that when put together, Google thinks you are a dating aging for old Western men and ladyboy’s. Don’t expect these people staying here for long, they will probably not even read the first paragraph.


Your own hits

Yes it happens. Some people either fail to exclude their own address so that every time you look at your blog you record a hit. This can be quite distressing to some people. For months they will be wondering that there must be a person out there who is looking at the web page at the same time as them, as if by fate. There are other people who have internet accounts that have dynamic IP addresses, that is every time they log on they have a different identifier. The person then thinks that is okay, as the stats are telling me it’s a different city every time. It’s then that they realise that by having a dynamic IP address means it will say different cities every time.

Statistically you will see large trends developing at certain points in the day, it will be the same country and it will probably have no referrer. There may be a strange pattern occurring, with big activity relating to when you were looking at your blog. Other than that I don’t know who these people are, sorry.

The truth is I have not got a clue why people are looking at this blog although it's probably more by random than purpose. Apart from the very few occasions I have given out the address I simply don't know. So if you could make yourself known that would be great. Please could you manually write down on a piece of paper the number of hits and where you are from, thus rendering stat counters obsolete (believe me people are scared)

Must go, I’m getting finger cramp pressing the refresh button Only another three hours until I reach two thousand.