Towards the end of October I installed Google Analytics. It’s a tool that tells you all sorts of things about how many visitors you have and how they’re accessing your site. For instance, you can see what countries your visitors come from, what search terms they’ve used, or where they’ve linked from. It’s really pretty cool.
I’ve become a touch obsessive about checking my daily stats. It’s sort of like a big game. How many people came by yesterday? Which page is getting the most hits? What are the most popular search terms? I have become completely engrossed.
Here are some fun stats from the month of November:
- There were a total of 772 visits from 325 visitors
- Visitors came from Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Romania, Mexico, Jamaica, Czech Republic, France, Venezuela, Ireland, Latvia, and Denmark
- 87% of visitors are Canadian
- The city with the most visits was Clearbrook, BC at 217 (thanks, Mom!)
- The US state with the most visits was California at 11
- The top search term that landed people on this site was “strocel”. Other popular search terms were: canadian maternity leave, jena zara, bamboletta doll, small head, poot and boogie, maternal creations, and some variation on punch card reward systems
- 40.4% of my visitors came directly to Strocel.com, 32.3% came here from another site, and 27.3% came here via a search engine
- Other than Google, my visitors came here from gailvazoxlade.com, Facebook, Heather’s blog, Saver Queen, BlogHer, and Bamboletta
- The most popular posts were: Punch Card Reward System, Canadian Maternity Leave, Crafty Mamas, All Day Kindergarten, Bamboletta Love, and Hannah’s Hair
- 24% of you are a Mac and 74% of you are a PC
- 51% of you use Internet Explorer and 43% use Firefox
I don’t actually know who my visitors are. I can’t get info like email addresses, names, or anything personally identifying. I can’t steal identities or send spam using Google Analytics. Still, there is a wealth of info there. Info that I can spend a lot of time contemplating and playing with. And now you know what I’ve been doing lately when I should have been folding laundry. 
You have a new reader in Montreal!
I came here from Gail Vaz Oxlade’s website.
So far your blog seems really interesting!