Lets talk about all of you for a change

So I've been doing a lot of talking about myself. Well actually, I've talked mostly about myself considering it is a blog about my experiences. But this wouldn't be nearly as fun and interesting if it wasn't an interaction of sorts. I'm not one to keep a private diary or journal. I do this blog to share with all of you, and I love hearing back from everyone in the comments. It is what fuels me to keep writing and bringing you stuff I think you will find interesting.

So since I know not every visitor comments every time on the blog, I began to track the visits to my website through Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a really neat google project that lets you see all sorts of information about your website, and who is visiting it. I am always curious to find out where the people visiting the blog are from, what they are looking at, how many show up each day etc... Google Analytics lets me do just that.

A month ago, about a week into the blog, I installed Google Analytics on my site. It was just a tiny piece of code in the website that tracks every visit. It is pretty impressive/scary what google can gather about each and every one of you from a small little piece of code.

I decided to write this post today, because I am celebrating my 1,000th visit to the blog. Technically right now the count is at 1,092 as I speak, but seeing as Italy has 71 visits to date, most of them probably me, my 1,000th visit came sometime yesterday. Also, I didn't have the tracking enabled the first week of the blog, so I missed counting all those visits as well, but we'll just say 1,000 for simplicity.

So 1,000 visits in about a month eh? Lets take a look at where you are from, and what you are up to on my blog!

Quick math (or Google Analyitics for that matter) says that I average 35 visits a day. The most visits in a single day came this past Monday, when I posted Paris Parts 1 and 2, which had 68 visits. A visit doesn't mean a different individual, but a count of how many times someone comes to the site. So if you type in ryan-mahoney.blogspot.com and browse a couple different posts, that counts as one visit. If you come back later in the day and check thet site again, depending on how long ago you were last on, that may also count as another visit.


I average about 20 Unique Visitors a day. That means that in any given day around 20 people make up that average of 35 visits. So almost everyone is coming back for more in the same day. This does vary greatly on different days though. Weekends that I say I am not going to be blogging tend to show less visits and visitors because people know not to check it until I am back.

What I find really cool is that I get to know my audience through these analytic reports. What do I know about you, you might ask, well I'll tell you!

I have had 150 different people visit my blog over the past month. That means that 150 different computers (probably tracked by IP address or MAC address if that means anything to you) have seen my site at one time or another. This obviously doesn't account for multiple people using the same computer to read it or who read it together.

I have had visitors from 5 different countries visit the site. The bulk of it is the US, but also Italy (of course), Spain, the UK and yesterday saw my first hit from Canada!

In the good old U.S. of A, I have had visitors from 11 different states. Here is a visual representation of them (the darker the state, the more visits from that state overall):



If that map is too small for you, or you don't know your geography, here is a list of the 11 states, with the number of visits to date:

New Jersey (608)
Pennsylvania (128)
New York (113)
Maryland (48)
California (37)
Illinois (5)
Massachusetts (2)
District of Columbia (2)
Virginia (2)
Connecticut (1)
New Hampshire (1)

So as you can see, New Jersey controls just over half the hits to the blog. Rightfully so I suppose, seeing as that is where I am from and where most of my family lives. Pennsylvania is close behind, again logical because I go to school there.

A cool little fact is that within these 11 states, 60 different cities are represented overall. 27 of which are in New Jersey.

My Hometown of Bridgewater is responsible for 110 of the visits, but is trumped by Liberty Corner in NJ, which has 247 visits. Villanova comes in at a close 3rd with 102 visits. On average, 12% of visitors every day are new visitors, meaning it is their first time on the blog.

I find this statistic to be one of the most rewarding of all: 88% of all visits are from returning users, meaning that only 12% of visitors have only visited the blog once. That must mean I am doing something right, because people keep coming back for more.

So now some nerdy statistics that I enjoy looking at. If you don't want to/don't understand the following, just skip to the next paragraph, I won't be offended. I am proud to say that the majority of my visitors use Mozilla Firefox to visit the site, not Internet Explorer. In fact, Safari comes in a close third, only 2% off of IE in 2nd. Most of you are using Windows, but 35% of visits came from Mac OS X. I even had a couple of hits through iphones, android phones, and linux. You're a tech savy bunch aren't you? Most of you are using a Cable internet connection, though some visits are even coming from a Dialup connection. I hope my pictures and long text loads okay on that connection, I'll keep you in mind dialup visitors when I post lengthy blogs and large pictures.

Okay, you can stop skipping now, the techy part is over. So now I have a bit of a challenge for you, my readers. Ready? From what I can see I have some pretty loyal readers, and for that I am very greatful. Knowing you are checking the blog day in and day out motivates me to make sure I post every day and to bring you something interesting to read about, so I try and come up with cool topics for the posts. What I would like from you, is your help in promoting this blog. I have sent out the link to most people in my email contacts list, and have posted it on facebook and the like. So if you have a minute, and know of even just one person who you feel would be interested in reading the blog, whether it be one specific post you think they would find interesting, or the entire thing, please send them the link or tell them about it. Maybe its a family member or friend who is into traveling, or someone who is interested in the Italian/Roman culture, or even someone from your church (or your entire church, dare I say it?) seeing as I am participating in an internship at the Vatican. Lets see what kind of buzz we can stir up on the internet. Maybe we can get at least one view from all 50 states? Might be a hard task to find that person in Alaska, but I think that could be a really cool goal. Maybe I'm being greedy, after all, I should be more than happy with the fact that even one person comes to the site every day, but I think if we can grow the community of readers, and get people to start commenting, and have some conversations, some interactions through the blog posts and comments (I'll start responding to comments directly both in the posts and in the comments sections) I think we could all come away with something new every day. The last thing I want is for this to become a day-by-day list of my day-to-day activities.

To all of my past and present readers, I thank you. I started talking, and you, for one reason or another, listened. I hope that you continue to check back as often as you see fit, and are getting something from all of my posts.

To any new readers who might be a result of this post, thank you for visiting. I hope that if the site has been recommended to you by someone, and you enjoy it, you will do the same and continue the cycle.

And as always, the comment section is open!

My family will be arriving very soon, they are currently in Frankfurt, waiting for their connection to leave from there to Rome, which as been delayed by 2 hours at this point. I will update twitter (on the right, as always) when they arrive.