Bienvenue Mayotte!

One interesting thing about blogging is number crunching.  Now, I know many people have problems with Blogger Stats and how it calculates hits (though we mostly all celebrate the Big Round Numbers when they come up).

An alternative to Blogger Stats is Flag Counter which manages to avoid counting the 'bots and what-have-you.

The last month according to Blogger...

...and to Flag Counter

It also breaks down into new visits and returnees, but the USP of Flag Counter is that it breaks visitors down by country and gives you a lovely flag graphic.

So why am I waffling on about this?

Well since I installed the flag gadget in Mar 2012, I've had visits from 127 countries.  This is a surprising number, but it also means that a new country doesn't come along very often these days and when they do they tend to be obscure or small (hello Vatican City!).  Well today I had two!   First up was Kazakhstan - OK, fair enough, I don't imagine Kazaks have been falling over themselves to find my blog.  The second was Mayotte.

Hang on!  Mayotte?  Where the hell is Mayotte?  Apparently, it's an overseas department of France, an archipelago between Madagascar and Mozambique.   It's educational this blogging lark...

So Bienvenue Mayotte!

But if you lived here would you waste your time reading my blog?

All I can think is that one of my regulars is on honeymoon and has nothing better to do.  Congratulations!

Those Crazy Stats (Again)!

Now, before I start I need to say again that I know that visitor stats don't matter and don't reflect true visitors.  But I like to play with stats.

By the way does anyone know why 'bots come in spikes of 27?

This time last month, I was celebrating 50,000 hits and noting that the monthly numbers had for the first time exceeded 4,000 - this month they almost came to 9,000.

Usual health-warning about Blogger's mislabeling of dates.

Go figure...

Wednesday(ish) Welcome and Stats

A late new follower welcome to Captain Richards Miniature Civil War from the blog of the same name. At the moment the blog is showing a pretty impressive scratch-built medieval city.

I'd like to thank everyone who has promoted the blog in the last week and commented on the 50K milestone.  Doing the giveaway has been fun (and one interesting fact is that prizes from Poundland hit the button!).

I know some people think that competitions like this are cynical attempts to garner new followers and boost stats.  Well, if that is the case, it's worked!  In the 50K post I remarked that March was the first month in which I'd had over 4,000 hits.  As I write, the blog's had 4,162 hits so far this month (ie, in the last ten days)!  Pretty surprising.

Aren't stats fun?

Welcomes, The Prizes and Crazy Stats

Welcomes

Because of the prize draw there will no doubt be several of these little welcome posts.  The challenge to me will be to make sure I also have other posts of interest.

Welcome to new follower Tim Gow.  Tim has a blog at Megablitz and More and was also a contributor to Interbellum.  The latter seems to be defunct, which is sad as what I've been reading of it this evening looks very interesting.  Happily, Megablitz seems very active.  Tim seems to be happy using an (erm) eclectic choice of figures and terrain, so I'm sure the Russian cars will find a good home if they end up with him!  I like the sound of a man happy to put Dulux on 54mm plastics!

Not Dulux...

A lot of you seem interested in the cars.  For those of you who don't realise they come from a range that Poundland have on-and-off.  There's a discussion of them on the LAF here.  The one's in the comp are identical because they were the only decent ones in the shop when I visited on Tuesday (that's Poundland for you!).  As it looks almost certain these cars will be given away, I'll have to go back and see what I can pick up for myself (most of the prizes were chosen on the basis of 'If I nobody chooses that I'd be happy to keep it myself' - I'm sure you'd agree the best criterion).

Equally, the Airfix tin comes from The Works if anyone's interested.  [Anyone spot a theme here?]   Our local branch is moving and so having a half-price sale...

Stats

I expected to get increased traffic due to the competition, but...

From the fact that one of the things I'm marking is breaking the 4000 views per month mark, the month astute of you will realise that of late I've been tootling along a just over 100 hits a day (I re member when it was a struggle to get 25...).  This morning when I checked the stats at 10.00am, it was about 325!  When I came home after an afternoon at the charity shop it was 700!  By the end of the day it was 906.  At this rate I'll have to start collecting prizes now for the 100K competition.

Some of this will be down to crawler bots of course (there's a suspicious spike between two and three this afternoon), but there's no indication in Blogger's traffic sources.  Vampirestats and a few more used to show up, have the bots now got cleverer?  When the bots do visit, I find that they don't register on the stats provided by the Flag Counter (one reason for using it).

The last month according to Blogger...

...and according to Flag Counter

Talking of Flag Counter, I've now been visited from users in 120 countries - Vatican City called in last week ("I've had that Pope in the back of my cab...").

50K and Other Stats

Well, a triple milestone tonight.  The hit counter has hit 50 Big Ones!  Secondly, in April we had 4,260 views - for the first time breaking the 4,000 views per month mark.  We're also about to hit the 1,000 comments mark, which is also very gratifying.  Thank you everyone for your interest.

In the tradition of such things there will be a give-away later in the week.  There will be winners!

In the meantime for the statistically minded...

Blogger's flawed chart

Has anyone else ever noticed that the X-axis on the Blogger stats chart is buggered?  This blog started in Aug 2012 - according to the chart it was Aug 2011.  It carries on until Apr 2012 and then jumps straight to May 2013 when it gets back to reality.

Hits on the blog (cumulative)

I've also noticed the coincidence that I made 17 posts in each of the first three months of this year.  Certainly not by design.

Stats Don't Matter

It was recently expressed on a blog (I forget whose, sorry) that, what with various bots, visitor stats don't matter.  Given the frequently of vampirestat as a traffic source in mine, it's a view a can sympathize with.

Despite that, I can't help having a warm feeling when I see that the blog has passed the 30,000 hits mark.  It doesn't seem too long ago that I celebrated 20,000 with much hoo-ha (in fact it was April).

A little number-crunching shows a nice steady rise

To go back to the original point, it was suggested that a truer mark that one should celebrate is the number of comments; as a measure of 'community interaction'.  All bloggers like to know they are being read and prompting thought in their readers.

In that light, I'm happy to say that the number of comments stands at 493 - a smidge off 500.

Why we should like round numbers is another question.

Thanks for visiting.  Thanks for following.  Thanks for all your comments and feedback.