Monday, May 3, 2010

Google Analytics and Those Who Drop In To Read This Blog

I looked rather idly at Google Analytics this evening, just wondering who - if anyone - drops in to look at this blog.

The results were rather startling.

Google informs me that most people who drop in are sitting at their laptops in Barcelona and London. Then then are curious people in French towns and cities - Marseille, Aix, Lyon and Paris mostly. And then there are people in Glasgow and Reno.

Glasgow and Reno???

Internet users are a curious bunch. The people in Barcelona spend an average of 13 minutes pottering about here, looking in and out of the posts. Glaswegians spend an average of a measly 16 seconds, so presumably they get here and think almost immediately "Oops, hit the wrong key there."

Weirdest of all, people in Reno spend an average of no seconds here. Zero. How can there even be a count of people who spend zero seconds here? Doesn't that group comprise more or less the whole world outside people in Barcelona, London and some French towns and cities? (And, almost, Glasgow?)

What is slightly spooky (OK, really not very spooky) is that I used to live, for years, in Glasgow. And once visited Reno for a work conference. How come the people who least drop in here are from towns I have some kind of connection with? Why are people from Vladivostock and Montreal not dropping in as little as Glaswegians and people from Reno, if you get what I mean?

Google may be missing a trick here with Analytics. I'm sure they could easily rig it to generate a digest of geographical data on what people around the world are looking at and buying. Wouldn't it be interesting to know that the biggest group of people looking at open-air-group-sex-porn in the whole wide world was in Seattle? That people in Reykjavik buy more philosophy books online than in any other city? That people in rainy Manchester look at tropical holiday websites more often and for longer than any other population? Or that people in Reno spend more time on gambling sites than on sites about living in France?

It could be a whole new reference resource.

Anyway, I noticed that there were also people dropping in here from lots of other countries, as far away as Australia, China and Japan. I do kind of wonder how they get here and what they're looking for since it's a tiny little corner of the web, just extolling the virtues of Provence.

Nevertheless everyone is welcome because Provence is such a heavenly part of this planet and everyone should experience its unique and blissful beauty at least once in their lifetime.

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