The story of 'Living Room' an emerging Melbourne church & other Miscellaneous rants
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Occasionally when I've got a spare bit of time on my hand I like to enter into my web-hosting statistics package to see what is happening behind my blog. I've always been a bit of a sucker for stats and research and am always interested to see which posts people are reading and how they end up at LivingRoom.
Its been a while since I've checked - there are a few new patterns emerging since January.
Firstly I've noticed that more and more people are surfing in from search engines than previously. I guess the longer your blog is around the higher its ranking on the engines. Of course Google is the highest referrer with 57% of the total, followed by Yahoo.
Secondly I've noticed that a lot more people seem to be using news aggregators, around 40% of total referrals (not including search engines) are coming from aggregators with the biggest by far being Radio. I guess its worth having xml and rss feeds after all. (not that I completely understand it still!)
Popular Posts: I also was a little discouraged by the posts that seem to be being hit the most by search engines. You spend all this time focussing your energies on writing articles about ways forward for the Church, issues of faith etc and then you look at your top ten entry pages:
1. Gary Kotter and the Theologians Drone
2. Hillsong (lately there has been a lot!)
3. Ethos, Pathos, Logos....Blogos
4. Flatulence Tax
5. The day my face stopped working
6. America's Best Christian Paintball Park
7. Moon Walk a FAKE?
8. Inflatable Church
9. Watch me Grow my Beard
10. Brennan Manning Interview
(closely followed by - Examen Explained, Gender Blogging and Lectio Divina)
I guess it could have been worse - I guess thats what happens when you get flashes of hyperactivity.
Search Engine Key words/phrases: In addition to searches on the above I continue to get daily hits from people searching for 'living room designs', also a considerable amount looking for 'punk hairstyles' (I have no idea why), quite a few people looking for information on 'bells palsy' and my fair share of people looking for 'Melbourne Nudie Bars'.
Country of origin of readers: 1. Australia, 2. US, 3. New Zealand, 4. Canada, 5. United Kingdom, 6. Belgium, 7. Malaysia, 8. Netherlands, 9. South Africa and 10. Philippines.
On average Thursdays and Fridays see more traffic than other days and between 2-4pm and 2-3am (Aussie time) seems to be when most people log in.
So after all the analysis is done I'm none the wiser really. None of it really matters - I guess I'll just keep on keeping on.
Posted by Darren at September 29, 2003 01:57 PM | TrackBackinteresting, didn't know there was so much blog info. out there. Thanks. DavidT.
Posted by: david t at September 29, 2003 03:18 PMMy best performing archive is a post on comparative murder rates in various countries, although some of the lighter posts are gaining.
Posted by: chris at September 29, 2003 03:56 PMAs a novice blogger I just get a buzz when someone visits much less leaves a comment! This week I had two visitors from Qatar. Plus the Yankees are outdoing the Aussies so far. Does this mean Central Command is watching me???? LOL!
Posted by: saint at September 29, 2003 08:01 PMMy last years' post about the Miss Malaysia/World finalists keeps on getting hit by people wanting to know more (or find pictures of?) the new Miss Malaysia/World 2003. Well, I don't know anything about her!
So you see, Darren, you are not alone :P
But I hope, having been led to that one entry, they'll stay on and browse the blog a bit, and come away the richer for the experience. You never know!
Oh, and last week, someone got to my blog searching for 'Rachel Cunliffe excel'. Hmmmm...
Posted by: irene at September 30, 2003 02:05 PMAh-ha. I'm glad somebody else's traffic from search engines has shot up. We're getting far, far more visitors to Kingdom Come from search engines than we were even a couple of months ago.
Your theory about length of time in existence (and I suppose, growing numbers of links) would explain it.