Statistical Mayhem!
Presented For The Stockholders
I launched Astonished Head on February 22, 2002. Since that date I have posted 439 entries, including this one. The graph above represents the number of Heads that have visited since I started the site, and is technically known as the Self-Satisfaction Index.
This includes a fair number of visits from bots and crawlers and indexers, which I can't filter out (or, at least, don't have the energy or motivation required to do so). But the disproportionate effect of these automated Heads is mostly upon accesses, rather than visits, which I've graphed here. Usually, if an IP address visits 3 times and has 2,417 accesses, it's not a human being.
The total number of visits for 2002 was 16,567. Approximately 1,500 of those visits were, um, me. Checking up on things and such. Of the total visits, a little over 5,000 were from unique addresses, so it seems that I do have many repeat customers.
That Big Big Spike around the beginning of October was the result of a mention on Vodkapundit. Unfortunately, Mr. Green is now of the opinion that I need to "Grow up," so I don't expect a repeat mention. I'm not really sure what the Not So Big Spikes in November and early December are, because my referral logs aren't working.
A typical visitor examined 7.15 documents before moving on. A typical visit supposedly lasts for .63 minutes, but I think that average is probably highly skewed by 'bot, crawler and spider visits. The longest visit was 58 minutes...which was probably me.
After myself, people who know me, and search engines, my biggest fan--with 110 visits and 812 accesses--is someone from Illinois. Hi!
I've had visitors from England, France, Italy, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia.
And that, it seems, is that. The trend of the number of daily visits is, slowly but steadily, upwards, which is gratifying, but I get hit by so many automated services that I can't quite tell if I've attracted more readers or more software.
So, as always: my appreciation and thanks to all of my human readers, and may each of you have a happy, healthy, prosperous, and astonishing New Year!
Gee, 110 visits? Not sure if thats me or not, but been reading your site purt near daily since the whole wine incident.
Server would show up as Illinois, but I really live in Iowa.
Posted by: John | January 1, 2003 10:39 PM
Hmmm. I could go back and see when that IP begins to appear in my logs, and see if it shows up at the same time as the Tale Of Harriet The Chomskyite Winery Woman.
But that might be a bit too obsessive.
And a tad Orwellian.
Posted by: --iaw | January 2, 2003 12:27 PM
Surely I sent you at least 5-6 hits on the same day as Stephen! :)
Posted by: andy | January 4, 2003 02:28 AM
Of course, you're right! How thoughtless of me, what a starfucker I have been, shameful beatings are clearly in order. Will you make the arrangements? ;-}
In all seriousness, though--Stephen did get the link from World Wide Rant, so that is where the Big Big Spike, in fact, began.
Posted by: --iaw | January 4, 2003 01:29 PM