Hit two milestones on my blog last week, 25,000 page views since beginning this odyssey of words back in July 2008, about 23 months ago.
Back then, I had no concept of pageviews, unique visitors, returning visitors and what else. I remember being amazed in the first few weeks that someone else found my nanospec space in the Blogverse. Otherwise, I still can’t claim to have anything more than the most superficial understanding of those subject titles. If I delve below the surface via Google Analytics, to see about search engines, referrer sites and direct traffic, my brain runs out of oil and seizes.
Blogging though is a two-way street. I started finding other bloggers on Thailand, my prime subject, even though my blog deliberately casts a wider net over Southeast Asia. I plan to cover more geographic space than just Thailand as the months go by this year.
With their help, I reached a wider readership, thanks to links from their wonderful and entertaining sites. Some bloggers even wrote about some of my posts. Puts into question their tastes! Or maybe they’re just generous to a fault. I’ve done the same because I appreciate their contributions to my enjoyment of the blogging life and appreciate their points of view and helpful information.
Some online forums found my blog and linked to specific articles. My post on vitamin B12 deficiency got a lot of traction with a Russian site focusing on Thailand. Who knew?!?! I can’t read Russian but seeing B12 in the middle of all that Russian script and receiving stats analysis by my Typepad account, proved the subject was popular.
I’m not much of a Twitter user -- until the recent political unpleasantness in Bangkok. Richard Barrow -- must-check blogs on Thailand, Samut Prakhan and many other Thai topics -- provided dozens of hits when during his on-the-ground reporting from the Red Shirt barricades asked for Thailand blog links he could put up on his Thailand Voice blog. I pitched my blog. Got a “massive for me” boost, with 65 Twitter-sourced hits that day. In fact, the 242 pageviews on May 18 (GMT) was my all-time single day high.
Bit of a digression: I started “following” far more Tweeters because of the riots. The amount and quality of information coming from the front lines were amazing, from both foreigner and Thai (in English). I have kept most of those “follows” because these folks are really tuned into Thailand -- and they have the good taste to not waste bandwidth with idle BS. Some of them are: Richard Barrow, of course, Terry Frederickson, Catherine Wentworth, kaewmala, vaitor, Mark MacKinnon, Tulip, veena T., Juarawaee, Talen, MrMeMock, Mike Rose at My Thai Friend, HooDon at Beyond the Mango Juice, The Irrawaddy.
Reading other writers’ blogs sometimes, I just had to comment. Well, that frequently led to new visitors from those blogs. While I recognize that every little bit helps, I only visit and read other blogs if I like to read them. And sometimes I’ll leave a comment if I like a particular post or thought. I think only a tiny fraction of visitors ever leave a comment or a “thanks,” but I don’t like to “read and run.” I like to let a writer know I enjoy his or her writing or points. Stats can be a cold reflection of blog activity and ultimately not terribly satisfying for the writer; on the other hand, comments are like a handshake or pat on the back.
My current Google Analytics stats show 40 per cent of my visitors come from other blogs, forums, Twitter, other Typepad clients, image seekers, another site crawler called Linked Within, and blog reader feeds. These are piled up into a segment called Referring Sites.
Direct traffic, which is people arriving via their bookmarks or typing the URL into their browsers, accounts for 14%. This is how returning visitors are registered. Have to admit I have a very small coterie of returnees, although those are hard for browsers to determine if cookies are not activated. Hey, there’s the sum total of all my knowledge of returning visitors.
Last but certainly not least, the giant Google search engine plus Yahoo and tiny Search and Bing, plus Ask and AOL point another 40% of my readers to Behind the Noodle Curtain. I’m certain they had a big electronic hand in helping me reach my second milestone, namely hitting 3,000 pageviews in the 30 days ending June 9. A lot of first-time visitors arrive on the Google train. Not many stay for long but what can I do.
Overall, Behind the Noodle Curtain is growing. And while it’s satisfying to see the numbers trailing upward, that’s not why I do this. Call the stats score a side light. Kind of like checking your lottery numbers, knowing the odds of winning anything are exponentially out of reach. But it’s far more about the act of writing, communicating with readers and connecting with other bloggers who I count as my virtual friends. I love the subject too, exploring the new-to-me cultures of Southeast Asia. The time spent doing this has genuinely helped me see more of my own culture, its good and bad. Self-education.
Last, visitor origins are an interesting source of amusement. I’ve had hits from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and China. My blog has also caught the attention of the Foreign Affairs departments of Canada and more recently Thailand. Maybe I should rethink this blogging thing!
