A Year in Review: Breaking Down the Numbers

Posted by Will on September 17, 2010

INTRO

I took these numbers from Google Analytics (yes, we are monitoring you). The period of time is one year, September 16th, 2009 to September 16th, 2010. Brittany is a numbers person. It is a pertinent part of her research. Me? I just like trying to figure out who is actually reading this thing.

I believe in levels of transparency (not that this calls for us to be transparent) and I thought it might be interesting to look over a few areas and present them to you, our loyal readership (all twelve of you).

TRAFFIC SOURCES

Traffic sources track how people are accessing the blog and from where they are coming. I’m not really surprised about the percentage breakdown.

The Top 10 Referrers are as follows …

1. Direct
   
2. Facebook
3. bramandsons.com
4. images.google.com
5. Google.com (referral)
   
6. bramandsons.com
7. Feedburner
   
8. Google.com (organic)
9. themorganmantra.blogspot.com†
10. heroinc.org†

†Blogging friend

I think the biggest surprise out of the Top 10 is Google’s image search engine. I occasionally tag our photos with alt tags (which is the proper and compliant thing to do) but not always. We rarely post photos, illustrations, and graphics that are not our own original files so I think for it to be so high is a little odd. I know so little about SEO, I can not really make a firm guesstimate, though.

Facebook, the mothership (the root index, bramandsons.com), our sister domain name (bramandsons.com), and Feedburner are all tied into this particular blog in some way or fashion. So, none are unexpected entries on the list.

To our blogging friends, all of you, we thank you for feeling we are worthy to link from your own digital narratives and homes.

INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC

I don’t take too much stock in visits from other countries.

Honestly, do I really believe someone from Mauritius, Iran, or Bangladesh is interested in our rambling claptrap? More or less, I suppose people across the globe are finding us … by accident. I don’t know … But just for fun …

The Top 10 Referrers are as follows …

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. Canada
5. Zambia
6. India
7. Spain
8. France
9. Australia
10. Netherlands

Also, we have gotten repeat or multiple visits from the likes of Italy, Mexico, Malaysia, Sweden, Poland, Brazil, and so on and so forth. I can think of some type of connection for the Top 10 (i.e. our cousin was in France this year, our friends were in Spain, etc.). The rest? Well, it is all really a mystery. Just like the Loch Ness monster. Or how airplanes fly.

NATIONAL TRAFFIC

States are a different story. I am a tad bit more confident in the national numbers than the international. We had hits in all but North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New Mexico. Is it a coincidence all of these states more or likely would be on my personal Top 10 of “States I Would Rather Never Live In” or is this just confirmation that we simply aren’t compatible?

The Top 10 States / Territories / Districts are as follows …

1. Georgia*†
2. Maryland*†
3. District of Columbia†
4. Virginia*†
5. California†
6. New York†
7. Pennsylvania*
8. Texas
9. Illinois
10. Florida

*Known family
†Known friends

The top 7 are certainly not eyebrow raisers. We either have lived in the top 3 or have strongholds of family or close friends in 4 – 7.

Personally, I don’t understand 8 – 10.  They are heavy in metro areas (Dallas, Chicago, Tampa Bay) and I can scrape around my brain for a person or two who I think might be a consistent reader … Hello, who are you people?

MOST READ POSTS

This, for a variety of reasons, is probably the most unstable list out of the bunch.

First, most people, if you believe the top traffic reference (see above), come straight to the subdomain (blog.bramandsons.com) and read whatever is on the first page. The way Google Analytics keeps track of page views is that you actually have to view the specific post. Meaning, there is a lot of content that is read and not accurately tallied. I can not imagine why someone would actually register an individual post view unless they were either commenting, reading comments, or were subscribed to our RSS feed. Knowing we get few comments and only have roughly 20 subscribers (plus 7 Google Connections) it really is tough to call this hard data.

The Top 10 Posts are as follows …

1. Top Five (A Short Compilation of Sports Related Memories)
2. Our Inaugural Experience
3. A Year in Photos
4. On the Road
5. Cleaning Up Our Act
6. Blood Thicker Than Water (Or I Just Took Another Round of Lortab, Apologies if this Does Not Make Sense)
7. A Few Shots from Georgia
8. The Longest Winter
9. Look Alive, DC
10. Cross Out the I (Or, How I Gave Up Social Networking)

You know, I made all of these excuses but if you look back at the events or the content within the Top 10, it really is not shocking to see what is there and why it is so. The above were either centered on big events or very photo heavy.

I can explain the number one post, at the very least. You would not believe how many search engine pings I get from “Mark Lemke” and “Jeff Blauser”.

A FEW MORE RANDOM FACTS

About 47% of our viewers are using Firefox. The next highest browser, coming in with 31%, is Internet Explorer. For the love of Moses, everyone who is using Internet Explorer, please upgrade to at least IE8. We even got a hit from someone using Camino.

Most of our viewership is using some variant of cable internet (42%) with DSL (32%) and T1 (31%) bringing in silver and bronze.

In terms of loyalty, those who have returned 26-50 times is at 11% (huzzah for double digits), second only to one-time-only-tourists (33%). That is, for the amount we actually blog, is a pretty good number. So, a big thanks, again, to all of our consistent readers.

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