Big Brother

Last Monday, I put tracking code into my website, to see how many visitors I get. I was expecting maybe 6 weekly. It really seemed like a waste of time, but [shrug] I did it anyway.
Boy, was I surprised with the results. Turns out that I have a handful of people who visit every day. Then there's another handful that visit regularly, though not every day. And then there's a third handful that have visited once -- might be transients, might be people on a lot longer visit cycle than I have measured yet. That's a heck of a lot more traffic than I was thinking I had.
The side effect that this knowledge has had on me is that I feel more connected to you, the reader. No, I don't necessarily know who you are (see next paragraph), but I know that some of you do me the honor of checking in regularly. The least I can do is provide fresh content for such an honor. So, you'll probably see more from me in the future. I don't know if I'll always have something interesting to say, but I'll be thinking of you -- whoever you are.
Now, for those concerned about their privacy: if you "lurk" -- which means, if you don't post a comment -- then I have very little way of knowing who you are. The information gathered does not identify users or even specific computers. All I get is a time and a place (the location of the server). Even that gets confusing when someone's server is not local. For example, I know my parents have read this blog in the past week because my mum commented, but none of the servers that have visited my blog were located in Oklahoma. The other interesting thing is that some people have "cookies" turned off on their computers, so some repeating visitors do not show up as return guests and the computer does not track how long that person stayed.

The long and short of it is, lurk all you like. I won't know who you are unless you say "hi, it's me!"

Above, you'll see the data collected from the past week. I had a lull during Saturday, so my average visitors is 8 per day, but without that lull, it's more like 10. The long green bars are page downloads. If it's to be believed, people average looking at two pages. I take that with a grain of salt though, because it seems to register people looking at the main page more than once per visit. That seems weird, so I think it must be a peculiarity of the software.

Thanks so much for reading my blog! I write this blog to keep in contact with you, my friends and family, and to know that I am succeeding makes me a little verklempt. :)