Statistical Collective Boredom

I was recently shown the "Stats" feature of blogger, which, semi-luddite that I am, I had not realised existed. Way back in the distant past I had managed to enable something called "Statcounter", but, these things being what they are, it required a password, which, naturally, I forgot. Since then the only pointers I have had as to blog-popularity are the Fatbirder counter thingy that you see down the bottom, a pageview counter that I cannot remember ever putting on and thus distrust, and the how many comments get left. And given that half the time I can't even leave comments on my own blog, let alone anyone else, I've been largely igoring that guide, and worked solely off the Fatbirder thing. This usually sits at around 150, but peaked once at 88. How that gets worked out I have no idea, as it moves across a fairly wide range with surprising regularity. Right now I'm sitting between a Russian language site that might be about birds, and some kind of photographic encyclopaedia that quacks at you when you open the Ducks page, but this varies.

Now I have discovered blogger stats, and my what a load of fun they are! They tell me, for instance, and this is what has prompted this short post, that yesterday saw a staggering 1044 pageviews. And only about 800 of those were me checking to see if anyone left any comments.... Seriously, 1000 pageviews? Vous etes having a laugh, non? Checking to see if this was some horrible mistake, a thought which presumably went through the minds of roughly 1000 people at some point yesterday, I went back a bit further, and discovered that the day before saw 675, the day before that 825, and the day before that 748. I'm no statistician, but that would seem to indicate that it's not just a fluke. I checked to see if I had inadvertently written about Great Tits on any of the days, for we all know what the internet is primarily used for, but of these there was no mention. Clearly I am on a roll - shame I just started work again...

I think yesterday's sortie into four figures for the first time ever can be explained away by it being Monday, combined with the world being once again close to economic collapse, and having just had three Party Conferences in a row. People are bored. Very bored. Cameron this, Osbourne that. Please, anything but politics! How about a so-called bird blog that hasn't mentioned birds for three days? Yes internet, take me there now! Hallelujah! Oh, wait......

Sadly the stats page does not show the length of each visit, or at least not that I have found, and that of course may paint a different picture, and tell me that cumulatively the 1044 pageviews lasted about 32 seconds. We shall never know, and seeing as it may burst my proverbial bubble, I'm happy to remain in the dark. More interesting is that it tells you which pages have been visited the most. No matter what time period I look at, the top page is "Birding in New Delhi", which dates from May 2009, generally by a factor of ten over any other page. The next most popular is my map of Wanstead Flats, which is probably just people wanting directions to Long Wood. Nothing else even comes close. These two facts are very surprising, but it shows that there may be some mileage in writing about popular birding destinations like Wanstead Flats. And New Delhi.

Far and away the best bit of stats is of course the keyword searches that brought people here. "Hoopoe Bird" is quite a common one - I particularly like how specific people are being. Hoopoe Cow, for example, is never seen. "Birderdes" is another one that crops up fairly frequently. Perhaps there is a birder called Des somewhere, or perhaps, in the same way that I type Wheater instead of Wheatear around 96% of the time, it's just a cock up. This week more than one person searched for "boy otter costume", which is probably entirely innocent, and today someone searched for "ryanair monopod", no doubt wanting to know how a monopod might best be used to beat a hand-luggage-measuring Ryanair employee senseless next time around. Sadly the keyword search is capped at ten per time period, so some of the more obscure and highly perverted ones that are perhaps out there will have to remain a mystery, but the possibility of scoring a few now down the line now that I have discovered a way to view them may prompt me to insert some ambigious phrases in future posts. Not that I am that immature of course.....

Bird's bum wiggling in the air.