Friday, May 09, 2008

More Fun With Sitemeters

Kids want their parents to be someone or something special. Perhaps mom or dad have a secret double life that is more wonderful than the boring drab existence of their alter ego. Something they can brag about to their friends at school that is more exciting than an insurance agent or sous chef. Even if they have to make it up.
A case in point is my oldest son, Wilbur. He seems to wish I were more famous than I am, and he thinks that because I have this here blog, that qualifies me to some minor level of fame. I pointed out to him that I was no more famous than any of the other millions of bloggers out there, like himself, who has a poorly maintained blog as well.
The other night, when the boys were over, as I was reading the news, he asserted his opinion that I must be famous, because I was on the web. I explained to him that I don't do this for fame (which if I did, would make me more unsuccessful than I already am), but merely as an avenue to vent my frustration at an increasingly moronic culture that surrounds me on a daily basis.
"But anyone in the world can read your blog, right Dad?" he asked.
That's when I decided to show him my sitemeter. I have one, but rarely look at it, as I don't get the trolls I used to back when I started blogging three years ago. (I wonder what happened to all the patriotic Bush supporters who used to troll around these parts, but perhaps there's nothing left to defend) My interest now is in the location of the visitors, how they found this blog, and which pages they viewed.
Almost immediately, while showing him my visitors, there was an oh crap moment. The sergeant of arms for the US Senate's computer had been looking at this blog. Glad to know my taxes are being well spent by the government to read crap like this, but hey, I guess I should take comfort in knowing all the terrists must have been caught, since they have time to waste here.
Another visitor was from Ireland. This led my son to conclude almost immediately it was Bono.
"Bono reads your blog Dad!"
As much as I may try to dissuade him from that idea, he's already decided that in fact it was Bono, and he and the president and God himself all read unbrainwashed.
I'm mostly interested these days in why some one from Europe might want to read this blog, and if they do, how did they locate it? What words do they type into Google Images to find this post from July of last year? It seems to be quite popular, for reasons I don't comprehend.
Another popular post is The Man Who Sold The World...Aspertame which at one time was ranked number two in Google searches for people who can't spell aspartame, now down to number seven. Basically a hit piece on Donald Rumsfeld who used political favors owed to him by the Reagan administration to fast track FDA approval of use of aspartame as an artificial sweetener, despite reservations about negative side effects (and it's previous classification as a chemical weapon) to the advantage of Searle, which Rumsfeld was then CEO of at the time.
But then, I also get lots of traffic from people who visit other blogs. Maybe they're intrigued by the name(doubtful), maybe they read one of my stupid comments there and have to see how big an idiot I really am(more likely), whatever the reason(probably the latter), I am eternally grateful. Maybe next year, it'll have improved enough to be second rate.

2 comments:

Graeme said...

We could only hope Bono reads your blog. Perhaps then he'll stop licking politicians' asses.

I think you're doing a great job.

Tom Harper said...

I think it's cool to go through Sitemeter and see where visits are coming from. Most of mine seem to be from web searches. It's weird when a post I did 3 years ago comes up on somebody's Google search.