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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Web Stats and Shout-Outs

One of the magical things about this-here internet thingy is that I can track who's reading from where. Okay, I don't really know WHO, but I can at least track WHERE people are reading Rhetoric & Rockets and WHAT they are reading, though alas I have yet to figure out how to cross-reference the two. That would be an interesting data-slicing exercise all to itself. Anyhow, the latest report from Google Analytics shows that these are the top five most popular pages or landing sites that people read when they visit:

1. Science Cheerleaders, Etc.
2. Saturn V Redecorating, Part II (Seriously? If you google my name, this is the second entry to come up--for gosh sakes, WHY??)
3. Petition Signing: Re-Opening the Office of Technology Assessment
4. Potpourri CLVII
5. Potpourri CLV

Oh yeah, and I'm still holding steady at ~20 visits a day, which is why I say thank you to all 20 of my readers (love y'all!).

What's more interesting to me is where my readership comes from, and it does vary week to week and month to month. I'm quite frankly astonished that I have as many diverse readers as I do. Be that as it may, here are the top five countries reading Bartacus...

1. United States (no surprise there)
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Slovakia
5. Czech Republic

The first three I get. My interests and writing would tend to attract readership from the English-speaking world. But the former Czechoslovakia (as I knew it growing up)? What's cooking there, guys?

Back home in the states, my most common readers come from the following parts of the US:

1. Alabama
2. California
3. Florida
4. Virginia
5. Illinois

1, 3, 4, and 5 I understand: They are either states where I live or have lived or they have NASA centers in them. However, while California has a couple of NASA centers, the readers are all over the place. Must be a lot of Science Cheerleader fans there. Greetings!

Even closer to home, another anomaly that's of interest is that there are a lot more folks in Decatur reading the blog than in Huntsville or Madison. Who the heck are you? X-)

And lastly, just because it intrigues me how people in unusual places find my blog, here are some of the more exotic locales checking out Your Humble Narrator's random postings:

Pelotas, Brazil
Sofia, Bulgaria
Okotoks, Canada
Abidjan, Cote de Ivoire (Ivory Coast)

Lappeenranta, Finland
Accra, Ghana
Jakarta, Indonesia
Tehran, Iran
Shinjuku, Japan
Nairobi, Kenya
Kaunus, Lithuania
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Kuching, Malaysia
Bacoor, Philippines
Manila, Philippines
Moscow, Russia
St. Petersburg, Russia

Again, howdy! And thanks for checking in!

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