Those of you lured in by my title (no doubt statistics junkies one and all) are in for a little disappointment… there’s no rhyme or reason behind my titles, I just go with the first thing that pops into my head, wether it makes sense or not.
One of my guilty pleasures is pulling up the stats on this site, provided by WordPress. I say “guilty” because I feel like I’m somehow violating visitors’ privacy… even though relatively little is revealed by the info WordPress shares with it’s users. If you’re running your own server, or if you’re running an installation of WordPress on server space you rent elsewhere, there’s ALL kinds of info you can glean about your visitors. Many of you probably already know this, but the little teacher in me loves a good lecture. I’m tripping on the power of knowledge! (… even if my share is below the per-capita average.).
I can see how many unique visitors I get each day (and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank both of you for visiting), what search terms people are using to find this blog, and which pages are getting individual hits. I expect this number to be quite low, because my main page shows entire entries, not intros that require click-throughs to read the rest of the entry. In fact, it’s surprising to me that I get any at all. Unless my site is being read with a feed reader – that might prompt page views on individual entries that look enticing – which itself would be a big surprise.
There’s one entry in particular that almost never fails to get at least one hit every day. I’m going to fudge the entry’s title, to avoid more possible misleading search results: “Beware of a-r-e-a c-o-d-e 3-5-2.” This little entry chronicling my tight-fisted shame has been reeling readers in by the handful, and I feel a little bad. Quite unexpectedly, a google search for a-r-e-a c-o-d-e 3-5-2 returns my entry on the first page of results (or it did last night anyway). I can’t help but wonder how many people are looking for useful info about the greater Gainesville (FL) area or UF, and instead are getting my crap entry about personal shortcomings.