A brief review of blog traffic for the past year

I don’t pay as much attention to blog traffic for FML as I probably should. I know there are a lot of things I could improve if I paid more attention to the various details. Instead, I tend to look for trends and broad numbers and that’s about it.

This evening I checked summary statistics from Google Analytics for the past year. Here is what I found:

  • There were 6,713 unique visitors to the site, which averages out to about 18.4 visitors per day
  • Visitors tend to spend only about a minute on the site each visit
  • The browser used by visitors breaks down as follows:
    • Internet Explorer – 46.51%
    • Firefox – 41.53%
    • Safari – 9.65%
    • Mozilla – 1.02%
    • Netscape – .48%
  • Traffic sources include 38.36% of visitors who find FML via search engines; 31.68% who go directly to the site (in other words, the site is bookmarked or the URL is typed in directly); and 27.42% of traffic comes from referring sites. Of the 38.36% of visitors who find FML via a search engine, the vast majority of them uses Google (over 80%).
  • The vast majority of visitors uses Windows as their operating system (80.45%). 17.93% use Mac OS X. 1.38% use Linux.

I am especially pleased at the good showing for non-IE browsers. Something else that is of interest is what keywords people use in a search engine that leads them to FML. Here are some of the top keywords, aside from the obvious ones such as “family man librarian”: “portable browsers”, “everyone has a double”, “library related wordpress theme” and “praise you in the storm.”

[tags]blog traffic, google analytics[/tags]

To buy or not to buy, that is the question

OK, I have to admit to a problem with lust. By lust, I mean this definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (there are several others): “Desire, appetite, relish or inclination for something.” What is the object of my inclination? An Apple Macintosh Powerbook G4 15″ laptop. As with so many other things in my life (unfortunately), I’ve become obsessed with buying something that I really don’t need. I want this computer’s wireless capabilities, its excellent operating system (the best in the world, in my opinion), and the ability to access the Internet anywhere in my house and in many other wireless hotspots. I already own an iMac G4, now I want the laptop version, so that I can network them together. Here’s the catch: I don’t have the cash for it. The only way I could buy it would be to charge it to my Apple Instant Loan. We’re talking a cost of about $1,800 for a refurbished laptop direct from Apple ($1,499 by itself) plus a few other things like the new Airport Express base station and Airport Extreme networking cards. Put me out of my misery and help me decide :-) although my conscience is already telling me the right answer. I’m wrestling with the question, To buy or not to buy. What do you think?