Click to Inflatify.
If you manage your own website, there’s a program called
Google Analytics you can use to track how many visits the site gets, where people are visiting the site from, that sort of thing. It’s pretty cool. There’s not so much detail that anyone would consider it a violation of privacy, but there’s enough information to be interesting. It can be an important tool for people who make money with their websites, because it lets them track what is popular with visitors and what isn’t.
Click to Largamate.
For people like me who aren’t making any money from this and aren’t worried about how much traffic or clicks we get, it’s mostly just for the sake of curiousity. For example, I don’t
need to know that my website got 6 visits from people in
Sri Lanka yesterday, but for some odd reason it did, and that’s kind of neat. Since the website went live in March of 2009, it has gotten visits from all 50 states, and 83 countries around the world. What people in
Uzbekistan make of this crap I have no idea, but it’s nice to know they’re dropping by every once in awhile.
Shout out to the Uzbeks! Big hand for the Uzbeks, everybody!
I can also use Google Analytics to tell you that the most popular photos on the site are the one I took of a sunrise over the beach on the eastern shore of Cozumel, and one I shot of an Iguana, also on the beach in Cozumel. The sunrise photo from Jonas Ridge looking out over the Blue Ridge foothills is pretty popular too, which is nice because I think that’s my personal favorite.
Click it! CLICK IT!
As for stories or blog posts,
Midnight Battle With the Raccoon of Doom and
Attack of the Sewer Beast are by far the most popular. That’s partially because they’ve been up the longest, but mostly it’s because people started sending links to those stories around to their friends via e-mail, and they kind of snowballed from there. To be honest, I think
Racism, Housecats, and the Healing Power of Ice Cream is my favorite among the
Whimsical Anecdotes stories, but it will probably never be as popular as some of the others because the subject matter makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
The other Ken Thomas.
Last but not least, Google Analytics tells me what search terms people type into the Google search field that leads them
to my site – and that’s always fascinating. Lots of people end up here because they’re looking for information on the
wild pony herd in the Grayson Highlands, so it’s nice to feel like I’m performing some kind of service.
Far and away though, the #1 search term that leads people to my site is (believe it or not) “Nuke the Swedes”, which leads them to the story I wrote about an unpleasant visit to the IKEA store in Charlotte. That just tickles the hell out of me. I was just hammering out a rant about a store I didn’t like, and apparently in the process I tapped into a heretofore unsuspected reserve of anti-Swede sentiment.
Lately however, I’ve noticed a lot of people are ending up here because they’re searching for “Ken Thomas Photography”, and that bothers me because I don’t think they’re looking for me – I think they’re looking for the other Ken Thomas. That Ken Thomas is a wedding photographer down in Charlotte who seems like a nice guy, is a lot better looking than me, and (unlike me) actually knows what he’s doing when it comes to taking pictures and stuff. If that’s who you were looking for, then you shouldn’t be here, you should be at his website, which is KenThomasPhotography.com.
Trust me, you don’t want me photographing your wedding. I’d spend all my time wandering around outside taking pictures of plants and birds, and then write some kind of horrible, embarassing, profanity-laced story about how your wedding sucked and a wild boar attacked me in a portable toilet or something.
- Ken
I used to think I had readers around the world until I realized all those hits from Russia, China, and Korea were hacker bots using my site to launch attacks on other sites. Niiiiiice.
I’ve had websites for a long time and it’s never ceased to amaze me at what type of responses I’ll get. Sometimes it’s good to post something mean and hateful just because it’s been a slow week and you want to see what happens.
I remember the warnings about having your information on a website. People warned, “They can find you easier.”. I told them about the phone book and that I don’t think anyone really wanted to find me. There may be a few that don’t want to see me again, but not many looking for me. To teach me a lesson, these folks took a downloaded a picture of me from my website, drew stuff on it, and put it on the fridge door at the office. I took a picture of one of them, drew stuff on it, and posted it on my website. I think folks were getting the idea then.
I have another Mark Spearman out there too. I’ve felt sorry for him because he’s a really accomplished Professor in some sort of engineering and really needs to be noticed. He’s finally toppled my page in Google Search(which should have happened years ago), but before that I found posts where he was asking how to get my page out of the way. Before that, people were looking for ways to rearrange a multi-million dollar factory, but instead found out how to put up a fence or how to adjust the valves on a Honda Shadow.
It all seems to get more fun as things get better. You’re right, Google Analytics is great. Anything I used similar before would work, but it was a hassle.
Too funny. My results are consistently mixed with those of the mystery detective (forensic anthropologist!) and the gay actress/comic on Logo. The three of us have different, but related exploits and battle for extensions. Other Kate got to Twitter first but by God I control the .com. By the way, can you photograph my wedding?
Pretty funny. However I’m now jealous, because I don’t not another handsome debonair Ray to compete with like you have the other Ken… LOL
My Intertube doppelganger develops newsreader software for Macs. I just wrench on my car and complain about architecture school, so I doubt he has anything to fear from me…