Statistics

I like blogging. It's good stress relief, enables me to keep a thorough record of events, helps me get my head around the information given by my doctors and work through difficult medical procedures/issues, and is a good way to get through the copious amounts of spare time I have right now. More then anything though, I like blogging because it is fun and relaxing.

If you have read my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I track my page views or "hits" at the bottom of the page. This tells me how many people have read, or at least visited, my blog. While I don't blog in order to get hits or attention (I primarily blog for myself), it is nice seeing the number of hits go up and knowing that people do follow my blog. It gives me some confidence in my writing ability and helps me feel like I am part of something - this is something that people often lose when they become chronically ill because their ability to go out and function as they normal would and interact with others if they were healthy is diminished. I struggle a lot with the isolation and loneliness so it helps to feel a part of something and that I can connect to other people even if it's not in person or through direct e-mail exchanges. Furthermore, I hope that some of the hits come from other people who have or are going to get and external fixator and that my experiences might provide some reassurance or advice to them.

Anyways, I track the hits on my blog. But that's not all that I can see! Blogger offers other types of statistics, which includes audience, traffic sources, and posts.

These are pretty self explanatory: audience refers to the country were a hit originates, traffic sources refers to the websites that referred or directed people to my site (e.g., a google search or link posted on Facebook), and the posts section tracks the number of hits per post on my blog. I can look at that data with specific time frames - within the hour, day, week, month, and all time. Each of these time frames will show the top ten countries that I get hits from. I find it fascinating to look at the data. One thing I have been eagerly doing is tracking the countries I get hits from. Because I can only see the top ten in each time frame, I check the statistics several times a day (after all, blogging doesn't take up all my copious amounts of spare time!). This allows me to see if I get on or two hits from a country in a  given day, even if it never makes the top ten and if therefore not included in the list of top countries per month or all time. That way I can keep track of where hits come from!

Here are the countries I have gotten hits from so far, followed by some interesting data about my blog:

Australia       Brazil                Canada         China                  France

Germany      Hong Kong         India              Ireland               Isle of Man

Israel            Latvia                Mexico          Netherlands        Nigeria

Poland          Portugal            Romania        Russia               Slovakia

Spain            South Africa      Sweden         Ukraine              United Kingdom

USA

The top referring site is Google (Sweden, Canada, UK and USA).
The most used search word is osteomywhat.

The top ten countries for page views are:

Country                    Pageviews
Canada                         3918
United States                3794
Sweden                        1113
India                             1092
United Kingdom          743
Ireland                          230
Germany                      176
France                          174
Latvia                           159

As of right now, I have 12762 pageviews.
43 people have visited my blog so far today
141 people have visited my blog this week.
1067 people visited my blog last month, which averages out to 34.3 views per day.

The maximum number if hits I have ever gotten in a single month was 1433. I was rather proud of that =).
The number one read post on my blog is the first one, in which is discuss how I ended up in this mess.
I have also noticed that my blog gets more pageviews when I have surgery.
Including this one, I have published 245 posts.

I know that 12762 pageviews is nothing out of the ordinary. There are so many blogs out there that get way more hits than my page ever will. I am okay with that - getting pageviews never was and never will be my reason for blogging. But I am still a little bit proud of it! When I started I didn't think that anyone would read this at all and it would be yet another page hidden away in the cobwebs of the internet. It really still it when you see that some sites get thousands of hits a day and that YouTube videos can go viral and reach twenty-thousand hits within a week. But for me, this is not to shabby. I think my ultimate goal would be to get to 20,000 hits. I say that only because when I started blogging I was following another person's site about their broken leg/fixator and they had that many hits - I was really impressed by that. It just seems like a really respectable figure and gives me something to work towards even if my goal is not to get loads of pageviews or get super popular. =)

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has read my blog, especially to those who follow it regularly. It means a lot tome and I get a lot of pleasure out of knowing that others take the time to read my thoughts and ramblings. Thank you!