A Year in Retrospect

It was a year ago that I started using Google Analytics to track activity on my blog. Since I have no money-making portion of this blog, it's purely an exercise in narcissism. But that being said, here's the rundown. A year ago, I averaged roughly 10 visits per day - now I'm at about 20. Aside from direct traffic (bookmarks, and people who type the URL in), the following people led the most people to my site: Ken and Alicia (16.19% of traffic), Steve & Katrina (10.53%), and Jose (7.24%).

Aside from searching for the title or URL of the blog, here are some of the search keyword terms that people have used to find my blog through the interweb tubes: "going cross eyed" (14 visits), "going crosseyed" (5 minutes), "you don't win friends with salad" (4 visits), "cafe standards" (3 visits), "evangelical lyrics," "evangelical lent," "famous aphorism," "irritated uvula," and "oh edna k, oh edna k" (2 visits each).

The following countries have not only seen the blog, but stayed long enough to read something: Vietnam, Belgium, Portugal, U.S.A., South Korea, Finland, Mexico, France, Greece, Mauritias, Egypt, Italy, Chile, United Arab Emirates, Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Germany, Argentina, India, Ireland, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Dominican Republic, Australia and Brazil. Only the US, however, has more than 50 visits total.

The only states that have not pinged my blog in the past year are Montana, Wyoming, Vermont, and Delaware. 32 states have actually had someone stay long enough to read something. Almost 3,300 visits are from Nevada, while Nebraska, Indiana, California, New York, North Carolina, Washington, Kentucky, and Utah have the most visits after Nevada (I can watch as friends and family move, and visits shift from North Carolina to Nebraska for instance).

For me, it hasn't been an eventful year. Looking back at my February 2007 blog archives, I was struck by just how similar it sounds, even the thought that the best time of year was February 15(ish) because it's a whole year before Valentine's Day comes around again. Next year at this time, I'll have been 30 long enough that I should be getting used to it. And I'll probably be talking about how wonderful it is that Valentine's Day is a whole year away again. Because some things never change.