Now you tell me
My web host keeps usage statistics for my little website. It has oodles of information broken down by month, day, hour, etc.
It tallies which of my web pages are hit the most: Usually it is my game or this blog. No surprise there.
It tallies the domain where they are coming from. I get alot of users from Canada (family) and Finland (I assume the game). A few months ago there were alot of game players from Pakistan, but they seem to have petered off. Or moved to Finland. There are stats on which browser and operating system they are running too.
But the most interesting statistic is the website that they came from. Most people have either bookmarked this blog (or are playing the game), but there are links from other web pages. A chunk of the links are from search engine results. People are reaching me by searching for “Huffman algorithm,” “China adoption,” and “French military game.”
There are links from other bloggers too. Some high schooler apparently searched for “cute baby girls” then embedded a link to a picture of Katie in one of her blog entries. My usage temporarily spiked because, unlike my blog, she has a following.
I am in at least one other‘s blogroll. I feel compelled to subscribe to the blog of anyone who admits publicly that they read mine. I also perused the other bloggers that hold his interest. And so I am now reading a blog dedicated solely to an Intro to Java course some college student is taking. I am kibitzing too. Forgive me: it reminds me of my days at Ohio State.
This friends-of-friends investigation also lead me to Dooce. She is a former web designer who is now a stay at home mom. She is a riot and as such, she has much more of a following than the rest of us posers. Today she (and others) were on an NPR segment talking about how they were fired for blogging to the world about their jobs.
Perhaps I should have known this yesterday.