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Statistical anomalies

Here's an interesting thing.

So those of you who use blogger.com to throw portions of your brain at the internet may have noticed that they've changed their layout and suchlike for the account settings page.

I hadn't of course because I'm a bit slow and I've also posted all my recent blog posts (the ones that are basically a photo and caption) from my phone, which is a very convenient way of throwing images at the web but not much use for writing long screeds of text because of it's tiny little keyboard. I plan to buy a bluetooth keyboard for the thing sometime in the future when I have some money, but don't hold your breath, that day may never come.

Anyhoo, that's enough rambling introduction. Here's the thing I noticed. They have statistics on the main page. And mine are fairly expected, it's hardly a high-traffic blog, I don't promote it anywhere and I rarely comment on other people's blogs (and that's where most of my visitors and commenters come from). So we're talking like 10 visits one day, 20 another. maybe as much as 30 in a day when I put up a halfway readable post. Nothing exciting, I'm certainly not going to install AdSense and live off that.

But I looked at the all-time stats, and in November 2010 I (apparently) got 5681 pageviews after a slow and steady climb to 580 the preceding month and then reasonably steeply declined to a normal level after that. What I'm wondering is what on earth happened in November 2010? Did some high-profile blogger or popular forum poster link to my site? Was my usual rambling and out of focus picture post hitting some kind of zen spot in the internets somewhere, or was I simply visited by the Internet Fairy, showering me with good gifts of visitors and Karma and so on?

Bloody weird anyway. That one month accounts for about a quarter of all page-views EVER, in something like 4 years. Can it be that long? Please, Infinite Universe, tell me it hasn't been that long.

I feel old now.

I turned 30 the other week as it goes. I didn't feel old then. But I hadn't just spent 10 straight hours threading through while sitting on a wooden board then. My rear end felt like a lump of dead meat by the time I left college today

Comments

Meg said…
Try being 53! Not a pretty picture. I will come back and read up on the last few posts - perhaps when I'm finally away next week!
Laura Fry said…
I had a similar spike in page views recently. No idea why. Internet fairy, most likely. :^)

cheers,
Laura
hmm - security code is 'panick' - relevant?
My "all time high" was in June (2011) - but I "only" got 2800 visits (compared to normal 1000-1500)

Maybe blogger draws a random "lucky" blog every month? (joke)
Andrew Kieran said…
Well, that's 2 votes for "internet fairy" AKA google.

I wonder if i do more "24-shaft patterns" I'll get more hits again. Think I might include that phrase in the next couple of titles for a laugh and see what happens
Anonymous said…
Does blogger give you search stats? I often find that if there's a sudden interest it is expressed in a particular search term. Why the search spike should happen, I don't know, but - noting my own strange googling habits - I wonder about crossword clues sending everyone to their computers in search of the same info!

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