Blog Stats Get My Attention

9 October 2010 Saturday
Well, I'm overnighting on Shatoosh tonight, as I depart for my road trip early in the morning for Denver, CO to visit my niece and great nieces. We have had quite a storm come in to the NW this weekend with lots of rain and wind along the coast. With the bilge dry, I will depart at dawn and rest comfortably knowing that Shatoosh and Pashmina  are safe under the roof of a covered slip.

Back in September, I added a blog counter and began to notice a "Stats" section on the blog dashboard. Curious, I opened it to find lots of information. At first, I thought there was more data than I wanted to know, but as I cruise through and revisit the sections, I am finding the info more interesting.

There is a map of the world and as people read the blog the country is highlighted in green. You can see what is happening on this day, week, month or 6 month period. You can also see which devices people are using to access the blog; mac users, pc users, ipods, ipads, iphones, and the list goes on. Also, you can see which search engines are being used, and which servers are being used. Also, which postings  have the most readings.

My blog counter logged over 1200 hits in Sept.That averages out to almost 450,000 since I starting blogging 3 years ago. The stat section reports The US and Canada have the most readers, but Europe is busy reading about the Adventures of Shatoosh and Pashmina. France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland,The Netherlands, Spain, Great Britian, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, India, Sri Lanka, Russia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Bermuda, Italy, Australia, and Brazil. After writing this post and posting it, I check to see who is reading it; 3 people in the US, 2 people in Canada, 2 people in India and 1 in Sri Lanka. How amazing is this?

The 2 most read postings in the last 6 months have been Johanna's Albin that was for sale and has since sold. Thanks to the blog and the Yahoo Albin Group. The most read posting is the one I wrote in Nov 2009, on Shakti, my Vashon Tug, which I owned back in the mid 1980's. I had to laugh. All the time and effort I spend writing about the Adventures of an Albin 25, it is trumped by a non Albin vessel, a 23 ft Vashon Tug. This stat really surprised me. I would have thought, coming out of the Bonneville Dam and Lock at over 14 knots would have peaked someone's attention, or crossing the Columbia River Bar would have captured the imagination of some old arm chair boater. I might have to go back and re-read that posting to see what is so intriguing about it, that everyone in the world is looking at it, week after week, month after month and year after year.