Stats And Graphs And A Mystery, Oh My!

A few days ago, I checked in with Blogger™ stats – which I do from time to time to do my due diligence that we haven't unwittingly become the hub of creepers. I edited not only the title of a post once but any traces of any similar phrasing I had used within the same post because I was uncomfortable with a search term that had brought some traffic to this blog. 

And just in case I sound like a creeper myself – or to reassure visitors to our blog that I can't see who you are – here is what I can tell when I look at our blog stats:

Audience: this tells me what part of the world you live in, by continent only.

Traffic Sources: traffic sources are anything that sends "traffic" our way which could include other blogs, links I've posted elsewhere or random things that are a bit of a mystery (things like real-estate sites that aren't really real-estate sites for example).

Posts: this one tells me which posts are most popular*. Our very first post is still #1 and probably so because if you haven't bookmarked our blog or don't have the URL dedicated to memory it's quite searchable through Google and the first thing that will show up in a Google search is that very page.

Keywords: This goes hand-in-hand with posts and it's where I found some keywords I wasn't comfortable having on this blog since there was a bit of a creeper factor and since we are public and I post pictures of my kids. That said, the number one keyword has always been "the oddest prime" and the next 10 or so are usually a variation of that. Occasionally I get a surprise that makes me laugh, and other times I scratch my head a little.

• "Hurt babies" shows up here on and off. It makes me a little uneasy since that's a pretty broad term to search for if you were looking for specific information about your hurt baby, but my babies' hurts are probably not the stuff that anyone looking for pics of "hurt babies" would get anything out of and we've gotten far more searches where it's clear that someone is looking for information regarding a hair tourniquet (AKA: hair wrapped around a body part) that I've let it alone for now.

• "Messy nursery" makes me laugh, since we do excel at this one. Hopefully our recent clean-up post is helpful.

• "Stinkeroo" – I don't think I ever said the word "stinkeroo" ever in my entire life until I quoted Nate for the first time here. I still don't say "stinkeroo" in real life. The boys know how to say "it's yucky!" quite well I suppose, but they have no clue what a stinkeroo is (although they should - it's a great all purpose word really). Still, it's another keyword search term that made me laugh when I saw it.

And that's it. That's what I can tell about you as a viewer, in case you were wondering.

• • • • • • •

Well OK, that's not entirely true. There is one last thing I can see when I look at our blog stats and it's how much you like us.

This is how much you've liked us since Blogger™ started providing stats, measured in "page views":

For a family and friends blog about my boys, getting over a thousand page views most months makes me feel a little less like I'm talking to dead air. To be fair, I would blog even if no one was reading since the people I do this for the most can't read yet.

Still, I got a little excited when I checked our stats yesterday and saw how close we were to the 2000 cut-off – and with 2 days left in the month to go no less! Also, I'm a graph nerd.

We hit 2000 page hits earlier today. New graph looks like this, in case you are also a graph nerd:

And in case you aren't a graph nerd, but are curious about some of those valleys I present the following:

Really, she was. Every single time.

My first thought was that I had less time to post and so it was a natural consequence that traffic would wane. Our biggest valley was our move late last summer and I think I posted 3 times in a 2 month span. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone even came back after that.

Of course, my first thought was quickly followed by my second thought: 

It's hard to maintain your stats when your biggest fan is staying with you and/or using your computer to view the blog since Blogger does not track my page views (or the page views of anyone who would be viewing this blog from my computer). 

Is it more likely that Gamma Rita has been the biggest source of traffic at the OP the entire time, or did our viewership wane as a natural consequence when Gamma Rita visited because I posted less? 

Dun-dun-DUN!!!

... or as my boys would say, "it's a mystery!"

Either way (and also as my boys would say) – thanks for reading along, everyone!

- L. 

*The fifth most popular post of all time on our blog is one I wrote less than a week ago, which means more than I can say. Really and truly – thanks again.