Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, January 2008 
Total Visitors       8,089   
Total Pageviews     19,570   
(Corrected total  11,344) 
Total Hits          22,753   
Total Bytes Transferred   441.8MB   
Average Visitors Per Day  260.93   
Average Pageviews Per Day 631   
(Corrected average      366) 
Average Hits Per Day      733.96

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are roughly the same as last month.

But wait! This month, we’ve got another opinion. As a sop to nebulous “new year’s resolutions”, I decided to experiment with Google Analytics, installed the code, braced myself for bad news and peeked at the results at the end of the month.

At first glance, the results for January are catastrophic:

Google Analytics Data, December 2007:

• Total Visits: 962
• Total Pageviews: 1,439 (No correction necessary)

Ouch! What the heck just happened here? Is Google Analytics mad, malicious or just plain nuts?

Well, you’ll have to sit down through a few paragraphs of technical explanation to understand what’s going on:

My “Urchin” web stats report generator is what’s known as a “log file analyser”, looking at the information collected by my web server to figure out what’s going on. This is a valid approach (in fact, it’s a rock-solid way of looking at what the site is doing), but it does catch a lot of information that isn’t completely relevant to webmasters: It makes few differences between human visitors and robots from search engines and spammers, for instance. Worse: its support for the concept of “visit” is based on assumptions and approximations. Meanwhile, Google Analytics works by embedding a small amount of Javascript code on each page, code that refers to the Google site and provides more accurate information for those human visitors with Javascript-capable browsers. That necessarily means that Google Analytics will capture less data. On the other hand, what data it does capture will be richer than what’s recorded by Urchin.

Additionally, you have to remember that my version of Urchin was last updated in 2002. Interestingly, the company working on Urchin was then bought by Google and (after another merger) became Google Analytics in late 2005. Being fully centralized, Google Analytics is constantly being improved, and a major update took place in November 2007. This becomes important when considering recently-introduced user agents or the usage pattern of newer media such as blogs.

All of which to say that they are important differences between one and the other product. To investigate those differences myself, I grabbed a single day’s worth of web logs and started crunching numbers for comparison. “My” numbers for identifiable human visitors were about double that of Google, and 40% of what Urchin was telling me (with robots and spiders and everything). So there’s a lot of salt grains to be taken when considering the exact numbers reported by Google Analytics. Other other hand, trends and orders of magnitudes and information that’s not to be found in Urchin can be valuable if considered carefully… and it’s in that spirit that I’ll be comparing both set of results.

(But don’t expect me to get rid of Urchin, or web logs. In many cases, such as finding out what spammers are doing on the site, they offer information that will never be captured by Google.)

All of this being said, our top ten most popular pages according to Urchin are:

/index.html                    625 
/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  372 
/reviews.html                  158 
/about.html                    134 
/contactt.html                 132 
/reviews/2000/books00c.htm     120 
/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 106 
/reviews/1996/books96b.htm     105 
/reviews/2002/books02d.htm     101 
/search.html                   100

This is more or less the same ranking that we’ve seen for months. But let’s see what the human users tracked by Google Analytics are looking at:

Ignoring, for the moment, the humiliation of results that are a third of what Urchin is reporting, the slight differences here are fascinating. Google-tracked human users go for reviews and the review index. The “Solaris Explained” page is still popular (though the bounce rate of 94% is ferocious as users look at the page and feel no need to go exploring the rest of the site.) The contact page is practically ignored by human visitors, which confirms my suspicion of heavy spam spider activity. The Google Analytics results pass “real world” evaluation: I can believe, maybe more easily than the Urchin results, that those would in fact be the most-visited pages on the site.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):

Netscape|6  4701 (4128) 
Explorer|7   965 (923) 
Explorer|6   753 (1041) 
msnbot|1     307 (261) 
Explorer|5   148 (new)

Little change here. I’m guessing that a few people got new computers with IE7 over the holidays…

But Google Analytics offers another view:

Dramatically different, isn’t it? A good thump to Mozilla triumphalism, right? But this shouldn’t be surprising: Most Netscape|6 hits, after all, are from the same spiders and robots that Google Analytics excludes from its calculations. Again, I have the feeling that Google Analytics (which is regularly updated with new user-agent information) is far more accurate in terms of what human visitors are actually using.

One Google Analytics report that I found unexpectedly fascinating is the “Bounce” data telling me how many visitors look at only one page, and then leave. Bounce isn’t necessarily bad: For pages that are popular with search engines, such as my “Solaris Explained” page, it’s perfectly OK if people come in, are enlightened and leave without looking at the rest of the site. Ideally, though, I would want them to stay for a while… but life’s short for everyone. In any case, I found that according to Google Analytics, most of my top-level pages had acceptable bounce rates, whereas some of my popular pages (such as the “Solaris Explained” page) had bounce rates in the eighties and nineties. As expected, really.

2. Where do these people come from?

Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

google.com/search      966 (1021) 
www.google.ca/search   254 (264) 
google.co.uk/search    107 (112) 
live.com/results.aspx   81 (new) 
google.com/books        72 (new)

Interesting appearances of both live.com (the new Microsoft search engine) and of Google Books.

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(Lingo key: “Organic” is Google’s way of saying that no one has paid for ads leading back to christian-sauve.com on those search engines. “Referral” is a direct link to this site.)

Keeping in mind that Google Analytics is optimized for maximizing Google Ad-Buys, there are a lot of interpretations built into the Google Analytics numbers. I suspect that all national Google sub-sites are aggregated together, and that a lot of number-crunching ensures that the data is “purer” than what can be deduced from server logs. Of course, Google Analytics provides me with a lot of extra information that Urchin doesn’t, such as “bounce rate” (people who only visit one page), “average time on site” (hocus-pocus calculation based on multiple page requests) and “new visits” (based on client-side cookie information)

In collecting referal information, Google Analytics seems noticeably stingier than Urchin. But keep in mind the “only tracking (most) human visitors” nature of its statistics: By nature, it’s built to miss a chunk of referals.

On the other hand, it does deliver very detailed information on the visits it does capture: Thanks to the Google Analytics data and some good old-fashioned number-crunching in Excel, I was able to build a bubble-chart (Using Bounce rate, Pages per visit and number of visitors as my data axes) that revealed that my “best referrals” are coming from Entropy Pump: People coming from that blog (10) visited an average of ten pages per visit (!) and only had a 20% bounce rate.

Big Blue Google, on the other hand, performed worse than the all-referrals average, sending me visitors that bounced more often and visited fewer pages per visit. (The “best” search engine, according to those metrics? Microsoft’s Live, which sent a tiny but relatively more curious bunch of visitors.) My collaborative blog, Fractale Framboise, also did well. Direct Traffic was also noticeably “better” than average . Which does actually smells like reality: People coming from Entropy Pump and Fractale Framboise are my target audience, and people directly coming to this site, presumably via bookmarks, are already familiar with the content and looking for more.

And this, frankly, goes straight to the heart of what web statistics are supposed to accomplish: Provide insight as to the nature of the web site’s visitors. Google delivers truckloads of visitors who aren’t interested in looking for more? Logical. Specialized blogs delivering pre-interested visitors? Sounds like an insight that can lead to further action!

In fact, it’s as I was contemplating Google Analytics data that I had either a revelation or a mini-stroke of insanity: If my review navigation pages are popular and if my readers are coming from review blogs, doesn’t it make sense to convert said review section to a more manageable blogging infrastructure? With the possibilities inherent to blog content management, RSS feed updates, specialized search engines and regular updates pressure, wounldn’t it be a better site if I dumped everything into a blog?

Why yes, it would be. I spent years resisting the allure of transforming this site into a blog, and it took a free analytics tools to convince me that it would be the way to go. And it meshes with a few nasty suspicions about my own work: A blog would allow harsh reader feedback, demand more regular updates, force me to write to a wider audience, push me in the spotlight of reader attention, and simply force me to step up my efforts.

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Of course, there are tons of things to do until then, not the least of which will be to dump eleven years’s worth of reviews into a back-dated database, create a template, come up with a tags-and-categories navigation architecture, catch up to the backlog and fiddle with the blog configuration. And once it’s up, I’ve got to feed the machine regularly. Eek.

So don’t expect any major change until this summer. But the seed of the idea has definitely been planted, and I’m off to investigate the possibilities of a newly-bloggish infrastructure. Keep reading these Site Reports for further updates.

Google Analytics tells me a bit more than Urchin about who those visitors are. For instance, it attempts to detect geographical location. Few people will be surprised to learn that most visitors come from the United States, followed by Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia. Most people use Windows, followed by Macintosh then Linux. (But there was one iPhone visitor!) Most people have a 1024×768 screen resolution. Most people have FLash 9. Most people have Java. Most people connect using cable or DSL. While I don’t really trust the exact numbers, the aggregation seems reasonable to me. Trend analysis, once we have even more numbers, will be more important than precise numbers.

In the spirit of Web Analytics, here’s an amusing new link to this site: quantcast.com says, about christian-sauve.com, “This site reaches fewer than 2000 U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a primarily older, highly educated, rather male audience.” Eh, fair enough.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

Nothing worth sharing in the January mailbox. (It’s been a slow month.)

4. Search Queries Oddities

Here are our top-ten queries:

>patricia pearcy nude       19 
>being canadian             12 
>ayn rand                   11 
>christian sauve            11 
>movie sneak previews       11 
>christian                  10 
>solaris explained           9 
>frank camper                8 
>free movie premiere tickets 8 
>that bringas woman          8

Meh. It’s the same old, same old!

But as it happens, Google Analytics has a different view on the month:

Some familiar search queries here, and results that don’t exceed the Urchin equivalent numbers, though some Urchin favourites are nowhere to be found here. Once again, I’m inclined to consider the Google Analytics numbers to be generally closer to meaninful reality than the Urchin ones. Speaking of reality, it helps that Ayn Rand is not listed in the Google Analytics numbers.

Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, February 2008 Total Visitors     7,562   Total Pageviews     18,327   (Corrected total  10,624) Total Hits     21,616   Total Bytes Transferred     403.6MB   Average Visitors Per Day     260.75   Average Pageviews Per Day     631.96   (Corrected average      366) Average Hits Per Day     745.37

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are lower, but per-average roughly the same as last month given the three missing days in February.

As usual, Google Analytics has a more conservative view of things, with just 1,054 visits and 1,471 page views.

Our top ten most popular pages according to Urchin are:

 /index.html                    611 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  300 /about.html                    148 /reviews.html                  142 /contactt.html                 136 /reviews/1996/books96b.htm     121 /links.html                    115 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 107 /writings.html                 107 /francais/index.html           102

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says

which is roughly consistent with last month’s results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses), as provided by Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search      921 (966) www.google.ca/search   215 (254) google.co.uk/search    100 (107) live.com/results.aspx   73 (81) google.com/books        63 (72)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(Lingo key: “Organic” is Google’s way of saying that no one has paid for ads leading back to christian-sauve.com on those search engines. “Referral” is a direct link to this site.)

My “Alternate Hugos” list got noticed on a newsgroup this month, which accounts for those groups.google.com referals.

There were no other new links this month.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

Empty February mailbox.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

Other amusing search keywords:

• “squids in space” “space opera”
• “il faut blamer le canada”
• brian mulroney blood drinker
• is faune chambers a slut?
• starsky and hutch phrase “do it, do it”

Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, March 2008 Total Visitors     8,009 Total Pageviews   20,819 (Corrected total  12,548) Total Hits    24,394 Total Bytes Transferred   431.6MB Average Visitors Per Day  258.35 Average Pageviews Per Day 671.58 (Corrected average      404) Average Hits Per Day      786.9

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are lower, but per-average roughly the same as last month given the three missing days in February.

As usual, Google Analytics more nuanced data capture puts the monthly result at 1,479 visits and 2,092 page views, with a spike on March 22nd following yet another SOLARIS re-run on a major channel.

Our top ten most popular pages according to Urchin are:

 /index.html                    711 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 478 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  260 /about.html                    191 /reviews.html                  191 /contactt.html                 151 /links.html                    137 /writings.html                 132 /search.html                   119 /reviews/index.html            112

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says

which (aside from the pole-position showing of solaris-explanation) is roughly consistent with last month’s results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses), as provided by Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search    1215 (921) www.google.ca/search  168 (215) google.co.uk/search    89 (100) live.com/results.aspx  74  (73) google.com/books       53  (63)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(Lingo key: “Organic” is Google’s way of saying that no one has paid for ads leading back to christian-sauve.com on those search engines. “Referral” is a direct link to this site.)

There were no other new links this month.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

There was quite a bit of spam in the mailbox this month, including some political stuff in hebrew, but mostly foreign-exchange scams.

The lone exception was a correction to my “Solaris Explained” page, which I have added at the end of the document.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS, popular much?

Other amusing search keywords:

• mickey blue eyes movie content offensive to christians
• “the effect of pepsi”
• aishwarya rai’s beauty is gasping
• can you fix crooked teeth with bare hands
• reviews with the word “omniscient” in it
• sexiest sean bean villains
• there aren’t many books on version control (this is surprising given how important it is!)

Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, April 2008 Total Visitors     10,524 Total Pageviews   23,947 (Corrected total  13,629) Total Hits    28,026 Total Bytes Transferred   499.9MB Average Visitors Per Day  350.8 Average Pageviews Per Day 798.23 (Corrected average      454) Average Hits Per Day

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are higher, which mystifies me.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 1,023 visits and 1,554 page views. Damn your more accurate algorithms, Google!

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                         798 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm       340 /reviews.html                       196 /about.html                         165 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm      155 /writings.html                      137 /links.html                         136 /search.html                        131 /texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 120 /reviews/1996/books96b.htm          107

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search   1017 (1215) www.google.ca/search 176 (168) google.co.uk/search  112 (89) live.com/results.aspx 71 (74) google.com/books      62 (53)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(Lingo key: “Organic” is Google’s way of saying that no one has paid for ads leading back to christian-sauve.com on those search engines. “Referral” is supposed to be a direct link to this site.)

There were no other new links this month. Looking at the usual egoogling search, however, I see that other Christian Sauves are gaining on me in the top ten search results. Mixed feelings here: while I’m concerned that the Christian Sauve brand is getting diluted, some chaff can be useful in order to provide a bit of plausible deniability and confuse any would-be stalkers. (Real stalkers, on the other hand, already know that this is the right site to bookmark.)

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

There was a lot of spam in the mailbox last month. I mean, really a lot of spam.

The lone exception was a maddeningly anonymous question:

Looking for name of old (mid ’80s) about survival training for AF aircrew with a female (first I think) pilot. One instructor goes too far.

Frankly, a ten-minutes search reveals nothing conclusive. Never minding G.I.JANE (1997), my best guess is 1989’s SURVIVAL QUEST about a civilian survival training group being attacked by paramilitary psychos looking for kicks, but that’s not very convincing. 1985’s KILLZONE has a snapping Vietnam veteran, but doesn’t seem to feature a female pilot.

IMDB does have a “survial-training” plot keyword, but it’s so far populated by a handful of post-2000 titles.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS, confusing much?

Other amusing search keywords:

• “carmen electra” fit to strip” easter eggs
• case brief on sauve vs canada
• how critical is the problem if an fbi agent shows up unannounced
• jokes that have a set-up with the subject anda punch line that highlights irony
• smoke crack with isaac asimov
• when gravity fails what happens

Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, May 2008 Total Visitors     10,738   Total Pageviews    24,441   (Corrected total  15,316) Total Hits    28,349   Total Bytes Transferred   525.8MB   Average Visitors Per Day   346.38   Average Pageviews Per Day   788.41   (Corrected average      494) Average Hits Per Day   914.48

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are slightly higher for some reason or another.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 935 visits and 1409 page views, both lower numbers than last month. Damn your more accurate algorithms, Google!

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                         895 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm       277 /reviews.html                       236 /about.html                         221 /writings.html                      170 /links.html                         162 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm      162 /search.html                        158 /ct.html                            154 /texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 140

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     869 (1017) www.google.ca/search  199 (176) live.com/results.aspx  78 (71) google.co.uk/search    68 (112) google.com/books       57 (62)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

There were no other new links this month. I’ll note again, with mixed feelings, that between spam sites repurposing my content and at least half a dozen other Christian Sauvés running around the web, it’s getting increasingly difficult to ego-surf my own name.

There is, however, a neat new site that performs a bit of semantic analysis on my home page at http://therarestwords.com/christian-sauve.com. Interesting.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

There was still a lot of spam in the mailbox last month.

But it wasn’t all bad: Two casual acquaintances made further contact via my web site, the publisher of Beccon Press notified me of their new web site at beccon.org (which showcases a new book I’ll review shortly), and the following landed in my email box:

If I would have know about your book reviews at an earlier age, I could have saved a lot of money and time, thanks for your over all picture/writings about authors and what they write.

Thanks! Given the amount of money I spend on books per year, it’s great to learn that I can help others make better-informed decisions.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS, confusing much?

On the other hand, I am now definitely removing any mention of “Tia Layne” from my review of Rick Mofina’s No Way Back : The name of his antagonist now belongs to a small-time blonde porn model, and the less amount of porn-related traffic I get, the better I’ll feel.

Other amusing search keywords:

• “horror movie” “with glasses”
• christian perspective on krump dancing
• christian toy collector should i quit collecting ?
• finally, a funny, decently produced christian video!
• is watching soft porn wrong as a christian with your wife
• why scientists shouldn’t write nursery rhymes

Ready for another look at the hum-drum routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, June 2008 Total Visitors     9,551   Total Pageviews    21,805   (Corrected total  13,651) Total Hits    24,889   Total Bytes Transferred   521.6MB   Average Visitors Per Day   318.36   Average Pageviews Per Day   726.83   (Corrected average      455) Average Hits Per Day   829.63

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are lower than last month, which I blame on the end of the school year.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 886 visits and 1563 page views, both lower numbers than last month. Damn your more accurate algorithms, Google!

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                         820 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm       424 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm      212 /reviews.html                       192 /about.html                         149 /reviews/index.html                 147 /texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 140 /writings.html                      129 /links.html                         125 /ct.html                            124

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results except for the index slipping in third place.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     830 (869) live.com/results.aspx 182 (78) www.google.ca/search  132 (199) google.co.uk/search   72  (68) google.com/books      49  (57)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

There were no other new links this month.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

This was a month for gratuitous abuse in the christian-sauve.com mailbox.

Oh, the news weren’t all bad: I received a kind word from a Swedish blogger I’ve been reading for a while. While his request to have a look at his sites comes a bit late (I’ve been doing that for a year, now), it was a thrill to see a well-known name in my mailbox.

There was also a very nice inquiry regarding Flash-based design work, which obviously must have gone to the wrong Christian Sauvé given how this site is a living monument to my willful lack of Flash expertise.

But as for the rest of the month, oooh…

First, there was the automated spam: one-and-a-half message per day, all blindly trying to stuff Google with links to their dubious pharmaceutical come-ons.

Second, there was the targeted spam: an author sending me barely-literate copypasta promoting the so-called publication of his latest at a vanity print-on-demand publisher. Twice. No, thanks.

Then, there was the usual hit-and-run complaint from an anonymous but disappointed reader, which I’ll quote verbatim:

dale browns tin man doesn’t seem so outlandish 10 years later maybe he did something called research those 10 years ago into future weapons systems. every toy in his books is at least under study and or development and feasible sometime down the road they break no laws of physics so maybe you guys need to do some research into a subject called physics

(Those who remember my review of Dale Brown’s The Tin Man may be puzzled as they remember that I actually spend very little time discussing plausibility issues versus the novel’s more basic storytelling flaws. But this isn’t the first time that a midly positive review of a conservative thriller has earned me some puzzling flack from fans. I almost wonder if it’s got something to do with the people most likely to read conservative thrillers.)

Finally, there was the succinct but mystifying:

You’re an idiot.

which doesn’t give me much to improve upon.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS, still confusing people after all these years…

Other amusi
ng search keywords:

• “book *easy enough to read”
• captain jake sparrow bringing sexy back
• christian opinions on space colonization
• drugs in rockland ontario
• which detective movies have the most allusions?

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, July 2008 Total Visitors     8,121 Total Pageviews    21,358   (Corrected total  13,897) Total Hits    24,727  Total Bytes Transferred   492.9MB Average Visitors Per Day   261.96 Average Pageviews Per Day   688.96 (Corrected average      448) Average Hits Per Day   797.64

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. Numbers are similar to last month, but a bit lower on the daily average. Hey, it’s summer.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 775 visits and 1253 page views, both lower numbers than last month. Damn your more accurate algorithms, Google!

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                         886 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm       479 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm      194 /reviews.html                       170 /about.html                         167 /writings.html                      138 /links.html                         134 /reviews/index.html                 133 /search.html                        128 /texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 125

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results, except for the weird showing of the yearly review indexes, which (upon investigation) looks to be a Google Analytics glitch.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     823 (830) google.co.uk/search   129 (72) www.google.ca/search  112 (132) live.com/results.aspx 107 (182) google.com/books       43 (49)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

There were no other new links this month.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

It was quiet, quiet month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox.

Even spam declined slightly this month, though that takes us to a mere one-message-per-day flood.

Otherwise, the highlight of the month was a hilariously inappropriate copy-and-paste-an-Amazon-page piece of spam for a vanity-press book. While the author self-identifies as a Christian, I doubt they ever made it to the “Thou shall not spam” commandment.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS, still confusing people after all these years…

Other amusing search keywords:

• books by ayn rand describes her lover as ‘hypnotically beautiful’
• meaning of sauve
• solaris film what happens
• solaris movie what is the plot?
• when did supermarkets become so class-stratified
• who can keep track of dale brown’s novel sequence?
• wonderful dream sauve

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, August 2008 Total Visitors     6,835 Total Pageviews    19,392   (Corrected total   11,999) Total Hits    23,073  Total Bytes Transferred   459.8MB Average Visitors Per Day   220.48 Average Pageviews Per Day   625.54 (Corrected average   378) Average Hits Per Day   744.29

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are lower than last month, which I blame (as I usually do) on summer.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 786 visits and 1,281 page views, both slightly higher numbers than last month. Oh Google, why do you tease me so?

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                     920 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm   270 /reviews.html                   185 /about.html                     180 /writings.html                  154 /links.html                     149 /contact756.html                148 /search.html                    147 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm  128 /reviews/1996/books96b.htm      101

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with the usual results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     692 (823) www.google.ca/search  111 (112) live.com/results.aspx  73 (107) google.co.uk/search    56 (129) google.com.au/search   37 (new)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

There were a bunch of new links and mentions of me on the web this month, due to my presence at the Denvention3 worldcon and my presence on two well-received panels.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

Tons of spam in the christian-sauve.com mailbox, as formmail drive-by spammers are getting more and more clueless.

Otherwise,

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

Yeah, SOLARIS explanations (and a timely nod to the Hugo Awards) aside, I was as surprised as you are reading “ferrobacterial accretion”

Other amusing search keywords:

• book reviews for the conscientious christian reader
• post singularity shapeshifter
• should christian kids read ayn rand?
• stab! stab! stab! review
• what the heck is up with ending to novel stone cold

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, September 2008 Total Visitors     6,039   Total Pageviews   20,321   (Corrected total   12,338) Total Hits        24,058   Total Bytes Transferred    462.9MB   Average Visitors Per Day   201.3   Average Pageviews Per Day  677.36   (Corrected average   411) Average Hits Per Day     801.93

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are slightly higher than last month, which is to be expected since this is September aka Return To Work.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 665 visits and 927 page views, both slightly higher numbers than last month. Oh Google, why do you slam my face in disgusting reality like that?

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                     807 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm   260 /reviews.html                   249 /about.html                     227 /contact.html                   224 /writings.html                  214 /search.html                    208 /links.html                     207 /francais/index.html            119 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm  107

No changes here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with the usual results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

(No, IE8 and Google Chrome don’t rank high enough to be mentioned.)

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     632 (692) www.google.ca/search  121 (111) live.com/results.aspx  90 (73) google.co.uk/search    68 (56) yahoo.com/search       30 (new)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

No new significant links to me this month, although it’s getting hard to tell with the explosion of search results about “Christian Sauvé”.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

More spam in the mailbox. A lot more spam.

Otherwise, I got a message from a veteran reader about Kim Stanley Robinson’s work, and a query by a newer reader on how to get a nearly-out-of-print book. Replies were sent to both of them.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

SOLARIS explanations aside, I’m still not sure why I should be considered even a minor authority about Charlie Sheen’s HOT SHOTS stomach.

Other amusing search keywords:

• a bare screen with a lone tv set in the middle. a brave opening for a movie
• army cadence “shoot’em in the head”
• book about aliens fusing their victims together
• how can i transport yard plants on a plane trip
• man locks people in cages and replays hey mickey over and over movie
• science fiction has a distinct value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, October 2008 Total Visitors     6,657   Total Pageviews   22,368   (Corrected total   14,340) Total Hits        24,903   Total Bytes Transferred    485.5MB   Average Visitors Per Day   214.74   Average Pageviews Per Day  721.54   (Corrected average   462) Average Hits Per Day     803.32

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are higher than last month, which mystifies but does not worry me.

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 744 visits and 1,066 pageviews, both higher numbers than last month. Still, there’s a reason why Google never gets invited to the best parties.

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                    874 /reviews.html                  330 /links.html                    301 /about.html                    299 /search.html                   285 /writings.html                 280 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  233 /texts/amazon-bookmarklet.htm  141 /francais/index.html           130 /administrivia.html            114

Little change here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with the usual results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

(Safari remains in perennial fourth place at 47.)

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search     563  (632) www.google.ca/search  110  (121) live.com/results.aspx  87  (90) google.co.uk/search    51  (68) yahoo.com/search       39  (30)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

No new significant links to me this month, although “Christian Sauvé” has gone from a fairly rare search result to about 3,410 hits on a dozen different Christian Sauvés.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

More spam in the mailbox. A lot more spam.

Plus! A self-published author oh-so-generously offering a copy of his book, obvious having avoided my whole “no, I don’t want your book” speech.

Plus! A 9/11 conspiracy theorist offering me hot tips on THE TRUTH!!1 WAKE UP SHEEPLE1!!!1

Plus! A cryptic (cryptic as in illiterate, not mysterious) message telling me to urgently get in contact with a spammer.

So, no, not much in the mailbox.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

Same old.

Other amusing search keywords:

• does anyone understand the ending to the movie solaris?
• a darkness more than light by michael connelly and hugo award
• elf critical critics movie elf stupid pointless bad will ferrell
• what is the ring representing in lord of the rings (rotk) from a christian perspective
• when a christian is threatened with bodily harm by another christian

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, November 2008 Total Visitors     7,021   Total Pageviews   23,317   (Corrected total   15,627) Total Hits        25,779   Total Bytes Transferred    512.8MB   Average Visitors Per Day   234.03   Average Pageviews Per Day  777.23   (Corrected average   520) Average Hits Per Day  859.3

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are higher than last month: I blame society. (In fact, this may be the best-ever month in terms of page views for this site.)

Ever-gloomier Google Analytics puts the monthly result at 781 visits and 1,169 pageviews, both higher numbers than last month. Still, there’s a reason why Google is known as a depressing party-pooper.

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                    996 /reviews.html                  336 /contact.html                  305 /links.html                    303 /about.html                    301 /writings.html                 299 /search.html                   295 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  232 /francais/index.html           167 /administrivia.html            154

Little change here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with the usual results. Only this month: /novel/index.html, which was a daily writing journal.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

(Don’t get too excited, Firefox fans. These numbers combine all versions of Firefox versus specific versions of IE)

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search           551 (563) www.google.ca/search        145 (110) live.com/results.aspx        93 (87) google.co.uk/search          54 (51) wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light 39 (new)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

No new significant links to me this month.

Google now lists about 3670 links for “Christian Sauvé”.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

Spam, spam, spammity-spam in the mailbox.

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

Same old.

Other amusing search keywords:

• does anyone understand the ending to the movie solaris?
• television drama – must be a dramatic movie; please do not select a half-hour or hour-long situation comedy, for there are often too many characters and multiple subplots, which would get quite confusing.
• that gorgeous bundle of sexy fun another scorching hot movie.
• christian books on how not to spiteful
• how do i handle christian book review in a book launch
• what comic strip character is dealing with ebola?

Ready for another look at the dull routine of an obscure web site? Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:

1. Mmm. Numbers…

My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…

Report for: christian-sauve.com, December 2008 Total Visitors     6,474   Total Pageviews    20,464   (Corrected total   13,203) Total Hits         23,023   Total Bytes Transferred     428.6MB   Average Visitors Per Day    208.83   Average Pageviews Per Day   660.12   (Corrected average   426) Average Hits Per Day        742.67

The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All numbers are lower than last month: I blame Christmas.

But Google Analytics whispers “remain humble” and puts the monthly result at 661 visits and 1,050 pageviews, both lower numbers than last month.

According to Urchin, our top ten most popular pages are

 /index.html                   1066 /reviews.html                  330 /about.html                    291 /writings.html                 285 /links.html                    281 /search.html                   275 /texts/free-movie-tickets.htm  193 /francais/index.html           166 /reviews/index.html            150 /texts/solaris-explanation.htm 150

Little change here. Meanwhile, Google Analytics says…

…which is roughly consistent with the usual results.

If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors), as provided by the clever gerbils at Google Analytics:

Same as usual, and not much movement in sight.

2. Where do these people come from?

According to Urchin, our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were

 google.com/search           484 (551) www.google.ca/search        104 (145) live.com/results.aspx        51 (93) google.co.uk/search          44 (54) wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light 31 (39)

As you may expect by now, Google Analytics has a slightly different view of the situation:

(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.)

No new significant links to me this month.

Google now lists about 3680 links for “Christian Sauvé”.

3. Ohh! Visitor comments!

Spam, spam, spammity-spam in the mailbox.

But, also, a note of encouragement. Mark from Ireland writes:

keep up the good work, dip into your site every other month always worth the effort! have a good new year

Mark’s return email address sadly bounced, but here’s what I wrote back:

Thanks for the kind words.  It’s always encouraging to find out that someone’s been paying attention.

There will be a few overdue changes to the site in 2009, including some that will justify more frequent visits.

(As soon as I’ve got some free time, of course…)

4. Search Queries Oddities

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

Same old.

Other amusing search keywords:

• cinema transforming mouse plasticine advert
• has colin firth spanked anyone on screen
• how to dress for a sauve gathering
• reliable book reviews for prison writings: my life is my sundance
• www\jesus sauve’com