Cracks in the Glass Ceiling

I started to use StatCounter to track visitors to this blog on April 15, 2005, three days after I started this blog. So, I can safely say, that the number StatCounter is giving me today for total unique visitors is nearly exact for the life of this blog so far. That number: 15,833. Page loads are at 19,900, but unique visitors is the key number because this number trims a lot of page loads that are being done by the same visitor. That's it, I'm afraid. The most popular blogs on the net get that many hits in a matter of minutes and upwards of 1 million hits a day.

Of those 15,833 unique visitors, only 1,074 of them visited between April 15, 2005 and December 31, 2005. 2006 had 1,431 visitors and for four months I wasn't blogging here because I was in London. For 2007, the blog took quite a leap to 5,700 visitors, but this is expected because I was blogging much more frequently. And for 2008, this blog has had 7,628 visitors so far, already putting to shame 2007.

The busiest month was April of this year with 1,245 unique visitors. The slowest month of this year was July with 402 unique visitors. I was in the middle of the Obama fellowship then and not doing much blogging. But the lowest number of visitors in a single month was in March of 2006. There were 27 visitors that month I was in London, barely edging out August 2005 with 28 visitors.

I would say one of the most unexpected pleasures of having a blog is seeing where readers are coming from to read my blog. StatCounter gives me plenty of information about my visitors. I can see your IP address, your network name, the location you are connecting from (or at least the location of your ISP), the number of returning visits and what time of the day you visit the blog. I guess, in a way, looking up stats on StatCounter is a way of stalking my readers...if I have any.

For example, I know Jarrod has already visited this blog today. The location of his ISP is in Denver and the network name is Mesa. He went to the blog about three times yesterday.

Just because someone works in Colorado doesn't mean their network is in Colorado. I know I have a reader in Colorado, but their network/ISP is in Chicago somewhere.

Some of you have this page bookmarked, but others don't because every time you go to this blog you Google "Bryce Perica" or "six hours on sunday" in order to find it. This seems like a lot of work. If you are in Firefox, just press Ctrl + D and you'll have the page bookmarked.

Every once in a while I'll have someone get here via the link on my Facebook profile page.

I show up at the top of the list, or near the top of the list, for quite a few Google searches. Try "airplane exit row rules". I'll be in the top 5 results because of this blog. One of my favorites, "starbucks italian soda". I'm third on the list because of this blog. Or, "mcdonalds soda size". That search will take you here.

My readers are few and far between, but I'm glad you visit this blog for whatever reason. That is to say, this would be a much quieter place if I didn't know you would be checking it tomorrow hoping for an update.