Fall goes on, hits go down. Let’s see the numbers…
1. Mmm. Numbers…
According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…
| Metric | This Month | Last Month |
|---|---|---|
| Visits | 991 | 1,109 |
| Page Views | 1,472 | 1,771 |
| Pages/Visits | 1.49 | 1.60 |
| Bounce Rate | 84.7% | 86% |
| Average Time on Site | 0:50 | 0:45 |
| New Visits % | 87.4% | 85% |
Aaah, panic! All numbers are down! Doom is upon us! What? It’s just a web site? Well, okay then.
At the same time, my old-school Urchin stats are still around, and here’s what they are telling me, for comparison’s sake:
| Metric | This Month | Last Month |
|---|---|---|
| Total Visitors | 10,178 | 11,022 |
| Total Pageviews | 30,498 | 35,117 |
| Total Hits | 45,505 | 54,867 |
| Total Bandwidth | 622.8MB | 713.8MB |
| Average Visitors/Day | 339 | 356 |
| Average Pageviews/Day | 1,016.6 | 1,132 |
| Average Hits/Day | 1,516 | 1,769 |
What? Urchin also agrees that my site is going down? We’re dooooomed!
According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:
| # | Page | Requests |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | /index | 151 |
| 2 | /texts/solaris-explanation.htm | 119 |
| 3 | /being-canadian | 44 |
| 4 | /reviews/1996/books96b.htm | 33 |
| 5 | /francais | 32 |
| 6 | /san-california-2009/index.php | 31 |
| 7 | /2009/09/the-lost-symbol-dan-brown | 29 |
| 8 | /the-reviews | 27 |
| 9 | /reviews.html | 26 |
| 10 | /2009/07/in-defense-of-food-michael-pollan/ | 25 |
It’s more and more interesting to see recent individual reviews of topical books rank highly in the top-10. If I was smart, I’d write even more of them.
If you care about such things, (and even if you don’t, I do!), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:
| Browser | This Month | Last Month | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Firefox (all) | 377 | 372 |
| 2 | IE 8.0 | 193 | 204 |
| 3 | IE 7.0 | 161 | 206 |
| 3 | Safari (all) | 105 | 155 |
| 4 | IE 6.0 | 63 | 77 |
IE8 takes over from IE7 (something I’ve noticed elsewhere as well) and IE6 keeps dropping on. This is all very sweet.
2. Where do these people come from?
According to Google Analytics, here are our main sources of visitors:
| Source | This Month | Last Month | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | google / organic | 643 | 709 |
| 2. | yahoo / organic | 72 | 88 |
| 3. | en.wikipedia.org / referral | 49 | 44 |
| 4. | bing / organic | 16 | 24 |
| 5. | fractale-framboise.com / referral | 11 | – |
(Lingo key: “Organic” is Google’s way of saying that no one has paid for links leading back to christian-sauve.com on those search engines. “Referral” is supposed to be a direct link to this site.)
Google now lists about 17,900 links for “Christian Sauvé”, up from last month. I’m not sure where they all go.
According to Google Alerts, there weren’t any new major links this month.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Not a whole lot fit to be shared with you, constant reader, in the mailbox this month. A lot of spam, mostly.
4. Search Queries Oddities
According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:
| Keywords | Visits | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | christian sauvé | 20 |
| 2 | christian sauve | 19 |
| 3 | solaris ending | 17 |
| 4 | solaris explained | 12 |
| 5 | sex hunter | 12 |
| 6 | “the john varley reader” review | 10 |
| 7 | solaris movie explanation | 8 |
| 8 | torcon3 emerald city | 8 |
| 9 | what part of canada’s political system is uniquely canadian and what shows influence of british governance? | 7 |
| 10 | “i’m not here to tell you how it ends” | 7 |
The “sex hunter” stuff worried me until I realized that all those queries were going to my review of Hunter S. Thompson’s political essay Better than Sex.
Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:
- “why be original when you can be good”
- christian sauve facebook
- meow mix tracie thoms
- what is the readership of malicious intent
- what christian has to say about dan brown’s ‘lost symbols’
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.
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