Four vs. Five

Today is the five year anniversary of my blog . . . Assuming a noon-to-noon time accounting, I’ve been at this 3,652 days, or 315,532,800 seconds.

The traditional and modern anniversary gift for five years is ‘wood’. 

. . . I don’t discuss my privates, so let’s move on.

Fun fact; it would take you longer than 3,652 days to count to 315,532,800, even if you don’t take any bathroom breaks.

Anyway, here’s the other stats.

And where am I with the blog on this anniversary day?

Here’s the accounting for Views. Understand this is not necessarily eyeballs on the (virtual) page. Some are robots, some are people looking at the reader and only seeing a small portion of what I do.

The highlighted numbers are the highs. December was also not bad because of my snack-by-snack reporting from our Caribbean cruise.

But why was November so high? Was it my NaNoWriMo effort? My Photography? the massive injury to my leg? Let’s see . . .

Ah . . . it appears people really enjoyed my pain as they explored Firefly-related stuff.

These were the general stats from last year:

These are the current numbers:

This will be the 1,240th post. Up 449 posts from LAST YEAR

I now have 754 followers or 282 more than last year. However, only a small number of the follower participate, and I greatly appreciate the contributions of people who comment on my posts.

I’ve had about 68,300 total views, with roughly 20,800 in the past 12 months. Those views came from about 7,800 visitors in the past 12 months or roughly 21 per day.

I’ve already shown the views charts, but a few years after I started my blog, WordPress started tracking actual visitors in addition to total views. It would be nice if WP let users have more control of their stats (or let us use Google Analytics), but they don’t. Here’s what 2014 looked like for this blog.

Numbers are difficult for some to process, so here’s a chart tracking monthly views and visitor from last April to now.

The scale for the views is on the left, and the scale for the visitor’s line plot is on the right.

I’ve had 10,453 comments as I write this post, and I care more about those as that’s people interacting . . . except that number is misleading since pingbacks are counted as comments, so it’s probably closer to about 7,500 comments.

What do people come to visit and comment on most?

Well, in this past year . . .

And there you go; the power of Browncoats. My Firefly series accounted for a lot of views.

As usual, my writing made a poor showing. Some will argue my NaNoWriMo No. 2 had 69 views.  I would rejoice were it not for the fact I know only six people have the password for that post.

The all-time list (views since inception of the blog) shows the same truth – people just plain don’t like my writing:

Excluding the password-protected NaNoWriMo post, the first fiction that makes an appearance on the list is my Zombie Apocalypse story, coming in with a five-year total of 63. That’s 63 views, and not necessarily 63 times it’s been read, and that’s over the course of five years.

In fact, these numbers are further skewed by the comments. Whenever someone comes back to answer or leave a comment, it counts as a view. So, even a small exchange can add 10-20 views. In reality, they are not views at all.

WordPress does not provide a complete summary of the comments; all they give you is the status based on the last 1,000 comments. Here’s the one for last year:

And here are the current comments stats:

Note I still have about the same number of comments per month, and that stands to reason as the core group of readers has not fluctuated much over the course of this past year.

Where do all the viewers come from? WordPress only started tracking where visitors came from in February of 2012, and since then the majority of visitors are from the US, which stands to reason since I live in the US and I write in English.

This was the map last year.

Last year I hinted it would be nice if it completely filled in. Here’s the current map.

Not much has changed, but last year I marveled at the fact none of the then 1.3Billion people in China stopped by my blog.

Well, now at 1.36Billion, China finally got on the map . . . with 1 view. I feel bad for the poor bastard who drew the short straw, but I would have liked to see the straw bundle being passed around.

I also use ClusterMaps, and it does not agree with the WordPress numbers. I like that they break it down a bit more. You can go look at it on your own HERE, but here are a few snapshots.

First up, the numbers from last year:

And here’s the current one:

ClusterMaps track unique visits (32,495 from March of 2012), and that’s how I estimate actual visitors as opposed to views. 

That means I had 11,057 visitors to the site this past year.

ClusterMaps gives you the visuals as well; I’ll only show a few regions.

The 2014  North America map:

The 2015 North America Map:

Cubans don’t like me much.

Here’s the 2014 Europe map:

Here’s the 2015 European map:

Still only one visit each from Luxembourg and Liechtenstein . . . A few years ago, one person in each of those countries came to see what’s going on and decided it did not warrant repeat visits.

I used to get demographics for my blog through QuantCast, but that option is no longer available on these free blogs. It will be interesting to see if the domain mapping (disperser.wordpress.com ==>> dispersertracks.com) will change any of the above, or if I’ll have other options.

While I don’t have the breakdown of demographics, I do have an approximate ranking for the blog from Alexa.

First up, the 2014 ranking:

. . . followed by the 2015 ranking:

Wow . . . I jumped from 11-millionth to 6-millionth place AND I’m ranked in the top 754,500 blogs in the US.

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who view only one page before leaving. The average time per visit is 5 minutes. I might be accused of low expectations, but all that sounds pretty good to me. Better than I expected.

Google changed their Page Rank feature. Here’s the ranking from last year:

And here’s the ranking from this year:

There is a bit of a discrepancy in the stated rankings for Alexa, but I’ll use the ones I got directly from the source. I’m not clear on the rest of the numbers but can’t be bothered to look them up.

There are a lot of sites that calculate ranks, so I decided to use one that aggregates a lot of information, and checks how much my blog is worth (Blog Calculator).

Last year:

This year:

So, my pay rate increase is roughly $7 per year. Wait . . . 30% sounds better.

I should also mention that since I had my domain mapped, I get differing results depending which URL I use. The above are for “disperser.wordpress.com”.

“dispersertracks.com” gets me higher numbers for some, and lower numbers for other things. They should both be the same, so I’m not clear as to what that means.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ o o o o o o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Astute persons might have noticed these doodles, and correctly surmised they hold some significance for me, and perhaps for humanity at large.  

Astute persons might have noticed these doodles, and correctly surmised they hold some significance for me, and perhaps for humanity at large.  

If you click on the doodle, and nothing happens, this is the link it’s supposed to go to: https://disperser.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/palm-vx-and-i/.

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Note: if you are not reading this blog post at Disperser.Wordpress.com, know that it has been copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intention, like attracting you to a malware-infested website.  Could be they also torture small mammals.

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Please, if you are considering bestowing me recognition beyond commenting below, refrain from doing so.  I will decline blogger-to-blogger awards.   I appreciate the intent behind it, but I prefer a comment thanking me for turning you away from a life of crime, religion, or making you a better person in some other way.  That would mean something to me.

If you wish to know more, please read below.

About awards: Blogger Awards
About “likes”:   Of “Likes”, Subscriptions, and Stuff

Note: to those who may click on “like”, or rate the post; if you do not hear from me, know that I am sincerely appreciative, and I thank you for noticing what I do.

. . .  my FP ward  . . . chieken shit.