The Great 2012 Quasi-Hiatus

From 1996 to 2011, christian-sauve.com offered a monthly assortment of reviews; Over the years, I have tried to stick to a monthly quota of eight book reviews, and all the movies I have seen.  From 2001 to mid-2011, this averaged out to about 96 book reviews and 120 movie reviews per year… not a bad average for volunteer work.

Due to ongoing happy lifestyle changes, however, this rhythm started sputtering in July 2011 and will not be sustainable in 2012.  To this end, I am announcing a semi-hiatus of sorts for the year: No more book review quotas, and shorter/shallower movie reviews.  I’m not saying that there won’t be any new material: the reviewing impulse is strong in me, I know that I will need to review some noteworthy books and I’m committed to keeping an online record of my movie-watching.  Still, as I realign my time toward more urgent purposes, I’m giving myself an excuse to not feel forced to put up content in 2012.  We’ll how this goes.

I also expect to be back in 2013, so this isn’t a good-bye as much as it’s a “wait a minute… or a year.”

Web Site Report – November 2010

I wasn’t really paying attention to my site in November (double-barelled illness, three trips and writing a novel will do that to ya), but apparently some other people were.  Here’s the low-down:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

Metric This Month Last Month
Visits 1,668
1,320
Page Views 2,094
1,937
Pages/Visits 1.26 1.47
Bounce Rate 89.99%
86.59%
Average Time on Site 2:57 0:49
New Visits % 89.87%
87.88%

Slight improvement in visits and Page Views.  I suspect some statistical anomalies in the “Average Time on Site”.  Otherwise, same old story.

For comparison’s sake, here is what my old-school Urchin stats are telling me:

Metric This Month Last Month
Total Visitors 14,236 11,909
Total Pageviews 61,119 58,359
Total Hits 79,783 77,981
Total Bandwidth 1,119GB 1.171GB
Average Visitors/Day 474.53 384.16
Average Pageviews/Day 2,037.3 1,882.54
Average Hits/Day 2,659.43 2,515.51

Some extra evidence of higher visitors/pageviews, but nothing dramatic.

According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

# Page Requests
1 /solaris-2002-explained 592
2 /index 167
3 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 105
4 /being-canadian 80
5 /nanowrimo-2010 56
6 /100-good-films 49
7 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 49
8 /alternate-hugos 41
9 /losing-weight 33
10 /the-public-service-in-science-fiction 31

The /nanowrimo-2010/ novel-writing log is exceptional to this month.  The rest is the same old routine, in largely the same order than usual too!

Because no one dares not care, 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) 504 457
2 IE 8.0 381 337
3 Safari (all) 327 170
4 Chrome 232 170
5 IE 7.0 119 103

Look at that!  Safari is within striking distance of IE8!

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 1,286 962
2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 56 41
3. books.google.com / referral 20 28
4. yahoo / organic 17 24
5. bing / organic 16

(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.)

Well, hello Google.  Nice of you to bring three hundred more of your friends.

Otherwise, no new noteworthy links this month. A few hits to my novel-writing log came from my nanowrimo profile page.

3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

Oh goodness, the spaaam, the awful spaaaam!

4. Search Queries Oddities

According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

Keywords Visits
1 solaris ending 58
2 solaris movie explanation 48
3 solaris explained 42
4 solaris explanation 31
5 being canadian 25
6 christian sauve 21
7 christian sauvé 20
8 solaris movie ending 19
9 solaris movie plot 18
10 solaris 2022 plot 16

Pretty much routine.

Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords: [Comments in brackets]

  • mushy, isn’t it? ace ventura
  • we aren’t defeated by winter as canadian
  • so.. we try again scott pilgrim
  • vision issues while driving lazers coming at me

Eh… not much of a funny month in the search queries.

Until next month, I remain… uselessly fascinated by web statistics.

Web Site Report – October 2010

Summer… over!  Temperatures… falling.  Web stats… boring?!?

1. Mmm. Numbers…

According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

Metric This Month Last Month
Visits 1,320
1,381
Page Views 1,937
2,045
Pages/Visits 1.47 1.48
Bounce Rate 86.59%
83.49%
Average Time on Site 0:49 0:51
New Visits % 87.88%
82.62%

If you squint, you can see a difference between both sets of numbers.  Otherwise…

For comparison’s sake, here is what my old-school Urchin stats are telling me:

Metric This Month Last Month
Total Visitors 11,909 11,708
Total Pageviews 58,359 53,065
Total Hits 77,981 76,026
Total Bandwidth 1.171GB 1.183GB
Average Visitors/Day 384.16 390.26
Average Pageviews/Day 1,882.54 1,768.83
Average Hits/Day 2,515.51 2,534.2

I squint and I squint… and yet I see nothing different.

According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

# Page Requests
1 /solaris-2002-explained 293
2 /index 190
3 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 125
4 /being-canadian 75
5 /francais 57
6 /100-good-films 56
7 /alternate-hugos 47
8 /the-reviews 44
9 /losing-weight 40
10 /essays 35

I should be pleased at how most of what I consider to be my high-profile essays and top-level pages are featured on this Top-10.  Alas, that Solaris article still dominates and that drives me crazy.

Because I know you care, 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) 457 463
2 IE 8.0 337 407
3 Safari (all) 170 194
4 Chrome 170 158
5 IE 7.0 103 99

Ooooh!  Dead heat between Chrome and Safari! Are we due for an upset next month?

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 962 937
2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 41 55
3. books.google.com / referral 28 17
4. yahoo / organic 24 24
5. espritvagabond.blogspot.com / referral 12

(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.)

The espritvagabond numbers are a blip given how a friend linked to my Australasia travelogue a few weeks after I completed it.

Otherwise, no new noteworthy links this month.

3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

The spam, the spaaam…

4. Search Queries Oddities

According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

Keywords Visits
1 solaris ending 32
2 solaris explained 31
3 christian sauve 28
4 christian sauvé 26
5 being canadian 22
6 michael pollan in defense of food summary 18
7 solaris movie explanation 16
8 essay movies tickets 14
9 christian-sauve.com 12
10 how to get into the movies for free 10

Pretty much routine.

Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords: [Comments in brackets]

  • dirty jason ["Dirty Jason" is the name of an x-rated web site.  It's also right in the middle of "Cooking Dirty, Jason Sheehan", which I reviewed a few months ago.  Arrgh.]
  • can a federal public servant write satirical novel [Do I hear a challenge?]
  • christian sauve beef sandwich [Hello, prankster friend]

Kind of a dull month in search queries.

Until next month, I remain… irresponsibly fascinated by web statistics.

Web Site Report – September 2010

Early fall numbers!

1. Mmm. Numbers…

According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

Metric This Month Last Month
Visits 1,381
1,310
Page Views 2,045
2,092
Pages/Visits 1.48 1.60
Bounce Rate 83.49%
82.14%
Average Time on Site 0:51 1:08
New Visits % 82.62%
83.97%

Pretty much the same thing, right?

For comparison’s sake, here is what my old-school Urchin stats are telling me:

Metric This Month Last Month
Total Visitors 11,708 10,116
Total Pageviews 53,065 50,664
Total Hits 76,026 69,486
Total Bandwidth 1.183GB 953.8MB
Average Visitors/Day 390.26 326.3
Average Pageviews/Day 1,768.83 1,634.32
Average Hits/Day 2,534.2 2,241.48

A significant bump here… but why?

According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

# Page Requests
1 /solaris-2002-explained 258
2 /index 228
3 /australasia-2010 171
4 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 133
5 /being-canadian 92
6 /australasia-2010-part-2 91
7 /100-good-films 78
8 /australasia-2010-travel-photos 74
9 /francais 58
10 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 50

The australasia-2010 pages are a blip (it’s a temporary travel log for friends and family).

Since I know that you can’t get enough of this stuff, 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) 463 486
2 IE 8.0 407 340
3 Safari (all) 194 184
4 Chrome 158 130
5 IE 7.0 99 89

Not bad, not bad at all. Will Chrome overcome Safari by year’s end?

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 937 872
2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 55 51
3. yahoo / organic 24 50
4. facebook.com / referral 19 25
5. books.google.com / referral 17 20

(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.)

The facebook numbers are a blip, my sister having put up a status update referring her friends to our australasia-2010 travel blog. As you can see, she’s far more popular than I am!

I was also overjoyed to see that an author whose book I have reviewed with a certain amount of even-handed detail twittered that the review had “made his month”. Wheee!

3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

Aside from various travel-related messages from friends and family: more Spam. It never stops, doesn’t it?

4. Search Queries Oddities

According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

Keywords Visits
1 christian sauvé 45
2 being canadian 44
3 christian sauve 41
4 solaris explained 32
5 solaris ending 19
6 solaris movie explanation 19
7 the cheese monkeys ending 18
8 solaris explanation 17
9 how to get into the movies for free 8
10 top 100 christian movies 8

Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

  • help im forty three; haven’t gained weight but feel stomach flabby suddenly
  • i did not get the ending for solaris

Yeah… not much of a funny month in the queries.

Until next month, I remain… fascinated by web statistics.

Web Site Report – August 2010

Late summer numbers!

1. Mmm. Numbers…

According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

Metric This Month Last Month
Visits 1,310
1,491
Page Views 2,092
2,063
Pages/Visits 1.60 1.38
Bounce Rate 82.14%
88.60%
Average Time on Site 1:08 00:39
New Visits % 83.97%
91.62%

I like those numbers: smaller audience, more interested audience.  I never had smaller bounce rate numbers.

For comparison’s sake, here is what my old-school Urchin stats are telling me:

Metric This Month Last Month
Total Visitors 10,116 9,635
Total Pageviews 50,664 49,397
Total Hits 69,486 66,671
Total Bandwidth 953.8MB 872.4MB
Average Visitors/Day 326.3 310.8
Average Pageviews/Day 1,634.32 1,593.4
Average Hits/Day 2,241.48 2,150.67

A significant bump here, maybe due to the increased activity on the site: If you post more, more people will come!

According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

# Page Requests
1 /index 284
2 /solaris-2002-explained 260
3 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 140
4 /australasia-2010 118
5 /100-good-films 63
6 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 52
7 /the-reviews 51
8 /the-about 46
9 /2010/08 35
10 /francais 35

The australasia-2010 page is a blip (it’s a temporary travel log for friends and family), but I’m very pleased to see the /2010/08 monthly page ranked so high.

Since I know that you can’t get enough of this stuff, 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) 486 499
2 IE 8.0 340 361
3 Safari (all) 184 185
4 Chrome 130 165
5 IE 7.0 89 120

Not bad, not bad at all.

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 872 1,005
2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 51 52
3. yahoo / organic 50 55
4. facebook.com / referral 25
5. books.google.com / referral 20 24

(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.)

The facebook numbers are a blip, my sister having put up a status update referring her friends to our australasia-2010 travel blog.  As you can see, she’s far more popular than I am!

3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

Spam.  Oh, joy.

4. Search Queries Oddities

According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

Keywords Visits
1 solaris ending 34
2 christian sauve 28
3 solaris explained 26
4 solaris movie explanation 25
5 adam roberts gradisil sauve 17
6 christian sauvé 15
7 how to get into the movies for free 12
8 solaris explanation 12
9 “christian sauve” photo 11
10 top 100 christian movies 11

Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

  • will my search appear in christian sauve’s search queries oddities site report

Good one, Alain. With a search query like that, I can dispense with the usual nonsense.

Web Site Report – July 2010

Now that we’re adding content to this site once more, let’s check the numbers.

1. Mmm. Numbers…

According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

Metric This Month Last Month
Visits 1,491
1,197
Page Views 2,063
1,699
Pages/Visits 1.38 1.42
Bounce Rate 88.60%
89.47%
Average Time on Site 00:39 00:57
New Visits % 91.62%
90.98%

Pretty good news: While the bounces are still high (which is normal for a search-engine-driven site), the content-posting frenzy of early July, along with updated Google XML maps, clearly had an effect.

For comparison’s sake, here is what my old-school Urchin stats are telling me:

Metric This Month Last Month
Total Visitors 9,635 9,201
Total Pageviews 49,397 48,672
Total Hits 66,671 62,705
Total Bandwidth 872.4MB 754.2MB
Average Visitors/Day 310.8 306.7
Average Pageviews/Day 1,593.4 1,622.4
Average Hits/Day 2,150.67 2,090.16

A more-modest increase there, which is interesting given how it suggests that the bump in visits is from authentic human visitors rather than robots, spiders and spammers.

According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

# Page Requests
1 /solaris-2002-explained 387
2 /index 220
3 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 188
4 /100-good-films 66
5 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 43
6 /2010/07/the-fuller-memorandum-charles-stross 40
7 /being-canadian 38
8 /essays 37
9 /the-about 36
10 /reviews/1999/books99g.htm 34

An interesting mixture of flagship essays and latest content.  Still wish the index page was higher that the Solaris article.

Since you can’t get enough of this stuff, 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) 499 358
2 IE 8.0 361 290
3 Safari (all) 185 164
4 Chrome 165 135
5 IE 7.0 120 111

Stability and good news at the same time.

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 1,005 790
2. yahoo / organic 55 40
3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 52 43
4. books.google.com / referral 24 22
5. bing / organic 17

(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.)

The spectacular increase in Google referrals confirms that the updated XML sitemaps are having an impact.

Ego-surf update: Google now gives 15,600 results for “Christian Sauvé”, up significantly sharply from last month. It has now indexed 1,270 pages on this site, which is about twice more than last month, but still about a third of the total content.  No new noteworthy results spotted in the Google top-50.

3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

One neat thing:  Expat Jeff writes to say:

July 2010 re Solaris.  Lem and Soderbergh tell us in book and script respectively, that the existence of man is a mathematical probability.  Ergo, so is the existence of God and heaven a mathematical probability – sans all the trappings of ritual and magi.

I wish I could be smarter and have something to add to this.

4. Search Queries Oddities

According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

Keywords Visits
1 solaris movie explanation 43
2 solaris ending 36
3 solaris explained 30
4 solaris explanation 20
5 solaris movie plot 20
6 top 100 christian movies 18
7 adam roberts gradisil sauve 15
8 solaris ending explained 13
9 solaris plot explanation 12
10 christian sauvé 10

Is Solaris still confusing people eight years later?  Apparently so.  It’s a good thing I haven’t put up an aexplanation of Inception.

Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords: [my comments in square brackets]

    • “six levels” inception [Uh-oh...]
    • apocalypto slash fanfiction [Just say no!]
    • can someone explain solaris [Many people can. They're not all right.]
    • film french woman cancan buys cafe absurd dance in street [I like the image]
    • is there any way i can get free movie tickets? [Indeed]
    • vision has changed and can see my eyelashes all the time [That happened to me]
    • what does christian married adults do for date night? [What other couples do?]
    • what genre is lovely bones [It's a genre hybrid in the service of a non-genre story.]

      Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

      Web Site Report – June 2010

      After last month’s changes, let’s check the numbers.

      1. Mmm. Numbers…

      According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

      Metric This Month Last Month
      Visits 1,197
      919
      Page Views 1,699
      1,374
      Pages/Visits 1.42 1.50
      Bounce Rate 89.47%
      86.83%
      Average Time on Site 00:57 0:48
      New Visits % 90.98%
      80.20%

      Good news all around; even the increased Bounce Rate and lower Pages/Visits is indicative of more visitors via the search engine.

      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 9,201 12,692
      Total Pageviews 48,672 63,809
      Total Hits 62,705 78,507
      Total Bandwidth 754.2MB 1.045GB
      Average Visitors/Day 306.7 409.41
      Average Pageviews/Day 1,622.4 2,058.35
      Average Hits/Day 2,090.16 2,532.48

      Harrumph.  I was about to joke that the decrease in activity must be because of fewer spammers, but as a matter of fact June has been a quiet month on the spam front.

      According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

      # Page Requests
      1 /solaris-2002-explained 269
      2 /index 191
      3 /how-to-get-free-movie-tickets 74
      4 /francais 38
      5 /being-canadian 35
      6 /the-reviews 28
      7 /2010/02/nest-of-spies-fabrice-de-pierrebourg-michel-juneau-katsuya 28
      8 /reviews/1999/books99g.htm 24
      9 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 18
      10 /100-good-films 17

      Solaris-explained appears unkillable at the top of the ranking, although the more interesting entry here is the review of “Nest of Spies”, given the media attention given to the authors following this month’s back-to-back interest in foreign spying in Canada and G20 security.

      Since I know you care, 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) 358 299
      2 IE 8.0 290 188
      3 Safari (all) 164 104
      4 Chrome 135 94
      5 IE 7.0 111 87

      Stability and good news at the same time.

      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 790 609
      2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 43 46
      3. yahoo / organic 40 40
      4. books.google.com / referral 22 11
      5. ask / organic 16

      (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.)

      Anyone doubting that the increase in this month’s numbers came mostly from Google indexing the new XML sitemap should take a look at the table above.

      Google now gives 12,800 results for “Christian Sauvé”, up sharply from last time I checked. Somehow, christian-sauve.com went back on top of the results after a few humiliating weeks spent in #2 after a Facebook page. I’m thinking that the raft of updates to the site over the last week of June had something to do with this.

      3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

      Not much spam, but the ones I got were from “ethical SEOs” (ah-ah-ah) trying to send me to the top of the search rankings.

      4. Search Queries Oddities

      According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

      Keywords Visits
      1 solaris movie explanation 42
      2 solaris explained 30
      3 solaris ending 21
      4 solaris explanation 19
      5 solaris movie plot 16
      6 christian sauve 15
      7 solaris 2002 plot 12
      8 solaris ending explained 8
      9 christian sauvé 7
      10 solaris movie ending 7

      My amazing powers of deduction tell me that Solaris was shown at least once on a popular TV channel somewhere in the anglosphere in June. Maybe it would be more interesting to show you the 11-20 spots from now on.

      Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

        • i dont get solaris movie
        • la vie exemplaire et héroïque de l’employé de bureau
        • search babylon web vache

          Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

          Web Site Report – May 2010

          Now that I’m paying attention to this web site again, let’s check the numbers.

          1. Mmm. Numbers…

          According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

          Metric This Month Last Month
          Visits 919
          1,073
          Page Views 1,374
          1,506
          Pages/Visits 1.50 1.40
          Bounce Rate 86.83%
          86.49%
          Average Time on Site 0:48 0:50
          New Visits % 80.20%
          89.28%

          Generally lower results.  Oh, well.

          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 12,692 9,908
          Total Pageviews 63,809 46,343
          Total Hits 78,507 57,210
          Total Bandwidth 1.045GB 788.8MB
          Average Visitors/Day 409.41 330.26
          Average Pageviews/Day 2,058.35 1,544.76
          Average Hits/Day 2,532.48 1,907

          Ha!  You liiie, Google.

          According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

          # Page Requests
          1 /index 269
          2 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 191
          3 /solaris-2002-explained/ 74
          4 /being-canadian 38
          5 /francais 35
          6 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 28
          7 /the-about 28
          8 /the-reviews 24
          9 /essays 18
          10 /2010/02/ 17

          Pretty much the same old stuff, although this is the last time you will see a good-old .htm file here, as I wiped out the remainder of the old static site while cleaning up the site during the month.  (I also made other changes, including an automated site-map, that should prove significant over the next months.)

          Since I know you care, 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) 299 386
          2 IE 8.0 188 256
          3 Safari (all) 104 113
          4 Chrome 94 95
          5 IE 7.0 87 95

          Chrome in fourth place, IE7 on its way out… everything is going according to plan.

          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 609 759
          2. en.wikipedia.org / referral 46 48
          3. yahoo / organic 40 68
          4. books.google.com / referral 11 8
          5. bing / organic 6 5

          (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 has started indexing more pages from the site, no doubt prompted by my new automated site-map.  This should drive search referrals up in the next few months.

          The one significant Google-egosurfing event of the month is that for the first time in a decade, christian-sauve.com is not the first result for “Christian Sauvé”, having been replaced by (ack, ptui!) a Facebook page.  In identity-theft terms, though, I consider this to be excellent news.  Heh-heh-heh…

          3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

          Not as much spam as I used to get, (I made a few changes that should keep me mostly-spamless for a few weeks/months) although reader “Mike” took pity on me and sent me Monty Python’s Spam song to offset that gaping void in my life.  You’re evil, Mike.  Don’t change.

          4. Search Queries Oddities

          According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

          Keywords Visits
          1 solaris 2002 plot 56
          2 solaris movie explanation 35
          3 christian sauve 33
          4 solaris ending 21
          5 solaris explained 16
          6 adam roberts gradisil sauve 14
          7 christian sauvé 13
          8 solaris explanation 8
          9 top 100 christian movies 8
          10 aboriginal people and a canadian identity essay 7

          More Solaris… sigh.  On the other hand, “adam roberts gradisil sauve” makes me giggle, because I really, really, really didn’t like that novel, and it looks as if someone noticed.

          Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

          • “she’s turning into a tree”
          • christian sauvé pavé
          • the adrenaline rush while writing a novel
          • what is the movie called where the guy eats mcdonalds for thirty days straight

          Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

          Web Site Report – April 2010

          Spring has sprung, but what about this web site? Let’s check the numbers.

          1. Mmm. Numbers…

          According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

          Metric This Month Last Month
          Visits 1,073
          969
          Page Views 1,506
          1,383
          Pages/Visits 1.40 1.43
          Bounce Rate 86.49%
          85.45%
          Average Time on Site 0:50 0:39
          New Visits % 89.28%
          83.90%

          Mixed results all around.

          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 9,908 12,039
          Total Pageviews 46,343 60.547
          Total Hits 57.210 77,115
          Total Bandwidth 788.8MB 984.2MB
          Average Visitors/Day 330.26 388.35
          Average Pageviews/Day 1,544.76 1,953.12
          Average Hits/Day 1,907 2,487.58

          Significantly down. Ah, well.

          According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

          # Page Requests
          1 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 497
          2 /index 161
          3 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 39
          4 /francais 39
          5 /the-reviews 38
          6 /the-about 32
          7 /being-canadian 22
          8 /essays 16
          9 /2010/02/the-baroque-cycle-neal-stephenson 15
          10 /reviews/2004/reviews-2004-08august.html 14

          Again: Interesting mixture of specific articles and top-level pages here, even though I wish the index would be ranked higher than the Solaris Explained article.

          If you care about such things, (and even if you don’t Microsoft does), 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) 386 330
          2 IE 8.0 256 191
          3 Safari (all) 113 112
          4 IE 7.0 95 118
          5 Chrome 95

          Not only has Chrome gone back to fifth place (with IE6 a distant sixth place), but Safari beats out IE7 this month!

          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 759 586
          2. yahoo / organic 68 88
          3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 48 50
          4. books.google.com / referral 8
          5. bing / organic 5 5

          (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 results for “Christian Sauvé” were up slightly this month, with no new noticeable links.

          3. Ohhh! Visitor comments!

          As usual, Spaaaaam.

          4. Search Queries Oddities

          According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

          Keywords Visits
          1 solaris movie explanation 94
          2 solaris explained 42
          3 christian sauve 30
          4 solaris ending 22
          5 solaris movie plot 18
          6 solaris 2002 plot 13
          7 solaris explanation 13
          8 solaris ending explained 12
          9 solaris plot explanation 11
          10 christian sauve solaris 2002 explained 10

          A bit dull, really.  Using my divination powers, I see that Solaris has been broadcast at least once on network TV this month.

          Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords: (Warning: Pretty dull month)

          • caucasian view on quebec referendum
          • is anthony bourdain christian
          • is michael pollan a christian

          Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

          Web Site Report – March 2010

          So, what did the end of winter look like on this web site?  Let’s check the numbers.

          1. Mmm. Numbers…

          According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

          Metric This Month Last Month
          Visits 969
          930
          Page Views 1,383
          1,477
          Pages/Visits 1.43 1.59
          Bounce Rate 85.45%
          87.10%
          Average Time on Site 0:39 1:00
          New Visits % 83.90%
          88.17%

          Mixed results all around.

          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 12,039 11,138
          Total Pageviews 60.547 58,200
          Total Hits 77,115 78,963
          Total Bandwidth 984.2MB 952.3MB
          Average Visitors/Day 388.35 398
          Average Pageviews/Day 1,953.12 2,079
          Average Hits/Day 2,487.58 2,820

          More mixed results.

          According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

          # Page Requests
          1 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 184
          2 /index 161
          3 /francais 52
          4 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 31
          5 /solaris-2002-explained 19
          6 /reviews/2001/books01i.htm 17
          7 /texts/100films.htm 17
          8 /the-reviews 17
          9 /2009/09/the-lost-symbol-dan-brown 15
          10 /being-canadian 14

          Again: Interesting mixture of specific articles and top-level pages here, even though I wish the index would be ranked higher than the Solaris Explained article.

          If you care about such things, (and let’s face it, few people 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) 330 322
          2 IE 8.0 191 190
          3 IE 7.0 118 102
          4 Safari (all) 112 131
          5 IE 6.0 70

          Oh no!  IE 6.0 beat Chrome by three lousy points to take the fifth spot!  Die, IE6, die!

          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 586 604
          2. yahoo / organic 88 71
          3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 50 49
          4. bing / organic 5
          5. contextsf.org / referral 4

          (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 results for “Christian Sauvé” were up slightly this month, with no new noticeable links.

          3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

          Like usual, Spaaaaam.

          4. Search Queries Oddities

          According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

          Keywords Visits
          1 solaris movie explanation 41
          2 solaris ending 23
          3 solaris explained 23
          4 christian sauve 19
          5 christian sauvé 11
          6 christian sauve solaris 2002 explained 10
          7 “les rivières pourpres” site:christian-sauve.com 7
          8 solaris ending explained 6
          9 that bringas woman summary 6
          10 the blind assassin review 6

          Well, ignoring the result at #7 (which is me testing a few things), at least it’s not all-Solaris-all-the-time this month. #6 is apparently explained by a YouTube comment telling people to search exactly for that string to understand Solaris.

          Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

          • i need to read the epilogue of the fifth horseman
          • was there a quote in the demon in the freezer in section 4
          • what factors led to canadian confederation and why didn’t all north american british colonies join at first?
          • what happened at the end of solaris movie
          • what happens at the end of solaris film
          • what is the american holocaust in the dale brown books
          • what is the ending of solaris
          • what is the main idea of freakonomics by stephen j. levitt and stephen j. dubner using steps
          • what is the name of the movie that has a man who cheats on his wife and then is forced with things to do to get his kidnapped daughter back
          • what is written on the side of the cheese monkey good is dead
          • what were surgeries like before laser surgery was invented

          Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

          Web Site Report – February 2010

          Does a short month mean smaller numbers?  Let’s find out!

          1. Mmm. Numbers…

          According to Google Analytics, the crucial metrics for the month are…

          Metric This Month Last Month
          Visits 930
          1,076
          Page Views 1,477
          1,897
          Pages/Visits 1.59 1.76
          Bounce Rate 87.10%
          84.39%
          Average Time on Site 1:00 1:11
          New Visits % 88.17%
          88.57%

          Yikes, even the relative numbers are worse.

          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 11,138 11,476
          Total Pageviews 58,200 74,483
          Total Hits 78,963 99,289
          Total Bandwidth 952.3MB 1.122GB
          Average Visitors/Day 398 370
          Average Pageviews/Day 2,079 2,402
          Average Hits/Day 2,820 3,202

          No doubt about it; numbers are lower.

          According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

          # Page Requests
          1 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 277
          2 /index 170
          3 /francais 53
          4 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 46
          5 /the-reviews 36
          6 /being-canadian 32
          7 /2009/07/in-defense-of-food-michael-pollan 25
          8 /the-about 23
          9 /category/reviews/bookreview 19
          10 /2009/09/the-lost-symbol-dan-brown 18

          Interesting mixture of specific articles and top-level pages here, even though I wish the index would be ranked higher than the Solaris Explained article.

          If you care about such things, (and let’s face it, few people 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) 322 366
          2 IE 8.0 190 243
          3 IE 7.0 102 152
          4 Safari (all) 131 111
          5 Chrome 71

          This faint cheering you’re hearing is me, celebrating the fact that for the first time in almost a decade, IE6 is not in the top-5 any more. Hurrah!

          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 604 682
          2. yahoo / organic 71 102
          3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 49 55
          4. ask / organic 5
          5. books.google.com / referral 5 10

          (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 results for “Christian Sauvé” were up slightly this month, with no new noticeable links.

          3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

          Spaaaaam.

          And that, again, is pretty much the total for the month.

          4. Search Queries Oddities

          According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

          Keywords Visits
          1 solaris movie explanation 54
          2 solaris explained 20
          3 solaris explanation 18
          4 solaris ending 16
          5 solaris movie plot 13
          6 christian sauvé 11
          7 solaris movie ending 9
          8 adam roberts gradisil sauve 7
          9 solaris ending explained 7
          10 solaris plot explanation 7

          The usual Solaris stuff, plus an amusing surprise at #8 (amusing, because it’s a direct link to an exasperated review of a book I wanted to like.)

          Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

            • “killing lizards” utah
            • all there is to know about being canadian
            • are levitt and dubner really qualified?
            • christians operating on deadly grounds
            • essay on why i love being canadian
            • jude law/robert downey slash fiction
            • mark wahlberg science fiction book astronauts return to homosexual population
            • sauve & debonair clothing inc
            • what happened at the end of solaris movie ending explain
            • what happens at the end of solaris movie
            • what happens at the end of the movie solaris
            • what is the movie solaris ending about

              Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

              Web Site Report – January 2010

              A brand-new year! How exciting! 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 1,076 1,241
              Page Views 1,897 1,984
              Pages/Visits 1.76 1.60
              Bounce Rate 84.39% 87.3%
              Average Time on Site 1:11 0:51
              New Visits % 88.57% 90.9%

              Generally stable, 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 11,476 31,325
              Total Pageviews 74,483 37,729
              Total Hits 99,289 75,030
              Total Bandwidth 1.122GB 723.6MB
              Average Visitors/Day 370 1,010
              Average Pageviews/Day 2,402 1,217
              Average Hits/Day 3,202 2,420

              Strange, isn’t it?  Could this possibly be something explained by spam?  Well, yes: A tiny number of visitors hammering comment spam will do that to web statistics.  Moving on…

              According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

              # Page Requests
              1 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 256
              2 /index 229
              3 /the-reviews 78
              4 /category/reviews/bookreview 50
              5 /francais 50
              6 /1996/09/arc-light-eric-l-harry 39
              7 /category/reviews/moviereview 30
              8 /being-canadian 28
              9 /2010/01 26
              10 /the-about 25

              This may not be obvious at first glance, but these results are solidly better than last month in that they show the consolidation (via clever redirects in early January) of old template content with new, with the notable exception of the Solaris Explained article..

              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) 366 444
              2 IE 8.0 243 236
              3 IE 7.0 152 175
              4 Safari (all) 111 158
              5 IE 6.0 76 90

              Chrome is is close sixth place, seven visitors away from overtaking IE6.

              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 682 876
              2. yahoo / organic 102 91
              3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 55 42
              4. carnavalboreal2010.com / referral 21
              5. books.google.com / referral 10

              (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.)

              The hits coming from carnavalboreal2010.com are the consequence of a one-time virtual event.

              Google results for “Christian Sauvé” were up slightly this month, with no new noticeable links.

              3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

              Spaaaaam.

              And that’s pretty much the total for the month.

              4. Search Queries Oddities

              According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

              Keywords Visits
              1 solaris movie explanation 40
              2 solaris ending 26
              3 christian sauvé 18
              4 “christian sauve” 16
              5 solaris 2002 plot 13
              6 christian sauve 11
              7 solaris explained 11
              8 solaris explanation 11
              9 solaris movie plot 11
              10 solaris movie story 10

              Not many surprises here.

              Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

              • i hope that doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone with a limited quantity of knowledge and a “necessary” attitude. although separation of a whole into different kinds of parts (i.e. different people) can lead to that attitude of a helpful reminder; some of the questions levitt and dubner study felt brilliant and then okay to me(but there are also some things talked about in the book that are really good).
              • jet li slash fanfic
              • christian hugo winners
              • i dont understand the film solaris 2002
              • saving private ryan slash fanfiction

              Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

              Web Site Report – December 2009

              End of the year! 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 1,241 991
              Page Views 1,984 1,472
              Pages/Visits 1.60 1.49
              Bounce Rate 87.3% 84.7%
              Average Time on Site 0:51 0:50
              New Visits % 90.9% 87.4%

              The number look better, but there’s something wrong with them.  Keep reading to find out what.

              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 31,325 10,178
              Total Pageviews 37,729 30,498
              Total Hits 75,030 45,505
              Total Bandwidth 723.6MB 622.8MB
              Average Visitors/Day 1,010 339
              Average Pageviews/Day 1,217 1,016
              Average Hits/Day 2,420 1,516

              Definitely something wrong; my site just isn’t that popular.  Keep reading for the answer.

              According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

              # Page Requests
              1 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 497
              2 /index 201
              3 /reviews.html 50
              4 /francais 38
              5 /reviews/1996/books96b.htm 36
              6 /the-reviews 27
              7 /essays 24
              8 /texts/100films.htm 23
              9 /2009/11/kitchen-confidential-anthony-bourdain/ 18
              10 /category/reviews/bookreview/index.php 18

              Not too bad, although I wish the Solaris article didn’t outrank my index page. (Google tells me there was a hug spike on December 20th, probably due to another network TV showing of the film.)

              But the answer to the grossly overinflated page view numbers are to be found in the unfiltered Urchin stats, which tell me that my Mimic review has been requested 2,519 times, that my Post Grad review has been seen 279 times and other bizarre results: Simply put, I got hammered by spammers.  Which I could tell from the spam itself.

              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) 444 377
              2 IE 8.0 236 193
              3 IE 7.0 175 161
              4 Safari (all) 158 105
              5 IE 6.0 90 63

              What you’re not seeing is that Chrome is within 25 points of taking over IE6 in 5th place.

              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 876 643
              2. yahoo / organic 91 72
              3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 42 49
              4. alecospapadatos.blogspot.com / referral 19
              5. bing / organic 16 16

              (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.)

              The hits coming from alecospapadatos.blogspot.com are consequence of a mention of my review of Logicomix.

              Google now lists about 13,700 links for “Christian Sauvé”, down from last month by almost a third, although at those numbers it doesn’t mean a lot.

              According to Google Alerts, there weren’t any new major links this month.  A lot of blog-spam, but no new links worth investigating.

              3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

              Guess what?  A lot of spam.

              Much of the spam comes in as blog post comments, by the truckload.  Much of it can be scapped without a moment’s thought, being identical and making no pretence at being anything but spam.  But from time to time, spammer get craftier.  Consider this:

              I want to quote your post in my blog. It can? And you et an account on Twitter?

              Intriguing… except that the attached link to a Twitter-spam blog, and that a quick search on “And you et an account” nets hundreds of identical results.  Deleted, mister spammer –you idiot.

              There there are the people leaving asinine content-free comments in the hope of getting a link back to their site.  Not gonna happen!

              4. Search Queries Oddities

              According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

              Keywords Visits
              1 solaris ending 55
              2 solaris explained 51
              3 solaris movie explanation 47
              4 solaris explanation 23
              5 solaris film ending 15
              6 solaris movie plot 15
              7 solaris plot explanation 15
              8 solaris movie ending 13
              9 christian sauvé 12
              10 christian sauve 11

              So, yeah.  Solaris.

              Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

              • “black actresses” and danger in action movies action movies for
              • drop the gun! and you, santa, drop the elephant” 2003 comedy
              • what is in gordons room? solaris
              • why are christian movies so bad?

              Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

              7,147

              Web Site Report – November 2009

              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.

              7,147

              Web Site Report – October 2009

              Not much to say this month, as we settle into the fall season.  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 1,109 1,056
              Page Views 1,771 1,887
              Pages/Visits 1.60 1.79
              Bounce Rate 86% 82%
              Average Time on Site 0:45 1:03
              New Visits % 85% 83%

              For the second straight month, numbers are generally down from all across the board.  Oh, woe.

              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 11,022 10,820
              Total Pageviews 35,117 35,868
              Total Hits 54,867 52,324
              Total Bandwidth 713.8MB 679.2MB
              Average Visitors/Day 356 360
              Average Pageviews/Day 1,132 1,195
              Average Hits/Day 1769 1,744

              Doesn’t look so catastrophic from that angle, so let’s put Urchin and Google in a ring and shout fight! fight! fight!

              According to Google, here are our ten most popular pages:

              # Page Requests
              1 /index 184
              2 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 137
              3 /2009/09/the-lost-symbol-dan-brown 45
              4 /reviews.html 42
              5 /being-canadian 33
              6 /reviews/1996/books96b.htm 30
              7 /the-reviews 30
              8 /francais 25
              9 /san-california-2009/index.php 24
              10 /category/reviews/bookreview 22

              Very nice showing here by Dan Brown. If I learned anything from this, it would be to post more reviews of topical content.  Hmmm…

              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) 372 338
              2 IE 7.0 206 205
              3 IE 8.0 204 198
              3 Safari (all) 155 120
              4 IE 6.0 77 86

              Not much movement there. IE8 is now within spitting distance of IE7 and IE6 can’t stop dropping, so there’s hope out there for all of my web designer peeps.

              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 709 640
              2. yahoo / organic 88 82
              3. en.wikipedia.org / referral 44 55
              4. bing / organic 24 24
              5. books.google.com / referral 22 -

              (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 17,750 links for “Christian Sauvé”, up from last month. Most of that number seems illusory: this site itself only accounts for 6,100 results, and there are less than 1,000 results shown in the paged list.

              The big new link of the month is a re-tweet of my review of Logicomix, which was another one of those “I get a Google News Alert of the author’s mention of the review 24 hours after posting the review” deal.

              Otherwise, not much.

              3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

              This month featured a particularly empty mailbox, except for the spam. Harumph.

              4. Search Queries Oddities

              According to Google Analytics, here are the month’s most popular search keywords:

              Keywords Visits
              1 solaris ending 20
              2 what part of canada’s political system is uniquely canadian and what shows influence of british governance? 19
              3 torcon3 emerald city 17
              4 christian sauvé 12
              5 solaris movie explanation 12
              6 solaris explained 10
              7 christian sauve 8
              8 from the notebooks of dr. brain sauve 8
              9 100 good movies 7
              10 glenn kleier 7

              It would worry me witless to think that my site is a source of information about the canadian political/governance system, but I have concluded a while ago that Google is just making things up when it comes to search keywords.  (Well, except for the “christian sauve” searches.  Those are legit, you hear me? Totally legit.)

              Assorted popular topics of search keywords this month included Hunter S. Thompson, Dan Brown and his Lost Symbol and the “Nikola Tesla Rockstar Scientist” poster I mentioned in my review of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

              Other odd, special, amusing or unexplainable search keywords:

              • “bon cop bad cop” slash fanfiction
              • “i’m not here to tell you how it ends”
              • “love being tortured”
              • the 100 most amusingly bad movies ever made
              • vancouver terminal yellow mound
              • what the hell happened at the end of solaris? movie
              • when will mutineer hunter thompson letters be published

              Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.

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