Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Happy 2nd Blogoversary to me!


Recently I posted that I passed the 600th mark for posts at Nutfield Genealogy.  This was a revelation for me, since I never realized or added up how many stories I’ve put online.  There are several other facts pulled from my statistics page that blew me away…
I’ve published about 1025 comments (I won’t tell you how many spam comments I’ve deleted!)
82,144 pageviews in two years.  Believe me that the first year was slow, much slower than this!
My highest month for readers was last month, June 2011 with almost 11,000 pageviews. 

Bigtime bloggers like Dear Myrtle and Dick Eastman are probably sniggering at my stats, but I’m still impressed since only a year ago, last July 2010, I was only averaging about 2,500 pageviews.  I can thank people like Randy Seaver atGeneaMusings, and Thomas MacEntee at GeneaBloggers for mentioning my posts in their own blogs and Thomas for having me on his BlogTalk Radio show last April.   Other bloggers have also mentioned me on their own blogs, Tweets or Facebook, and also being named in Family Tree Magazine’s top 100 genealogy blogs has helped me to increase my readership.  By the way, Randy Seaver recently posted his 5,000th story at GeneaMusings, and Thomas MacEntee recently celebrated his 2,000th post at GeneaBloggers.com ! 

When I started blogging, I didn’t know about the statistics page on my blog and I didn’t care who was following me.  I began my blog as a way to practice writing out the stories from my family tree, and to share them with family.  I started on the community blog www.londonderrynh.net  and saw how easy it was to post stories.  Eventually I began to include local history and genealogical lore from New England and before I knew it, I had created my own blog at Nutfield Genealogy. 

I’m seriously considering not looking at the statistics at all this next year, and just writing for the pure pleasure of putting these stories out there for everyone’s enjoyment.  However, I love checking out the “Traffic sources” every night just to have a nice after dinner laugh over all the silly search terms I find listed.  Not only do I find a few good chuckles, I love to puzzle over what folks are looking for in their searches, and have a good rant when it appears that a cousin might be looking for a common ancestor.  It’s a “curiosity killed the cat” sort of dilemma.

If you have a blog, what is your opinion of the statistics page?

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

20 comments:

  1. Happy Blogoversary, and many more!

    Hm, I have never checked stats, so I can't answer that question. All I know is, I enjoy reading your blog. :)

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  2. Hi Heather
    I also enjoy checking daily the traffic sources for the same reason. My blog is extremely limited in scope, ie to just Epsom, NH history, and my goal was to try posting everyday for a year, so I don't expect the wonderful numbers of hits your wonderful site has. Yours was one of the inspirations for me to give it a try. So far so good, as I try to blog well ahead and have not missed a day yet!

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  3. Congrats on your 2nd Blogiversary and on a Blog well done!

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  4. Congratulations. I, like you, did not pay attention to stats and followers. I just started to write what I found. I was amazed how many people who stop by to read my blog.

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  5. Congrats on two wonderful years, and good stats too!

    I look at my stats now and then on blogger, but use my site counter more frequently. I find the experience interesting, but sometimes concerning. The search words are bizarre, but the sites that feed to me are sometimes scary, I just know they are sploggers. I am better off not looking, because, I just don't have the time to chase them down, nor the energy, cause it is all negative energy. I don't want to use up my daily allowance of energy in the negative realms. So, I don't look daily. :-)

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  6. Congratulations on your milestone!

    I do check stats, not daily, but whenever I do a new post. What is the most interesting to me is how people find/get to my blog. Of course the keywords and search terms can be interesting too.

    How do you know how many hits you had in any month? I just use the blogger stats and it doesn't seem to retain historical information. It just provide the current day, week, month. Do you use something different?

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  7. Thanks for your comments everyone! Marian, to see your hits in a month go to the "all time" graph and then hover the cursor over the peaks on the graph to see how many pageviews per month. The numbers aren't as interesting to me as the search terms and the different ways people end up at my blog.

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  8. Congratulations!

    My blog is new with small readership (is that a word?) but I do like checking the stats. What always strikes me is the different countries where readers are located. Iran? Indonesia?

    And I don't know anything about sploggers and I think I'll just keep my head buried in the sand.

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  9. Congratulations Heather! Happy 2nd Blogiversary to you!

    Also, I check stats occasionally. As others have stated, sometimes the search words used to find my blog are a little on the strange side. I am always intrigued to see which posts emerge as the most popular.

    Cheers to you,
    Jennifer

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  10. Happy Blogiversary to you!

    I do like looking at the stats every few days or so. It's interesting to see what search terms bring people to my sites. (My two are very different, as one is all-American (so far) and one is Jewish genealogy!)

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  11. Happy Blogiversary, Heather! Just think, if you hadn't started blogging we'd probably have ever
    discovered we were related!

    As for stats, I check them once a week and look to see what were the keywords used to find my blogs. I also check the amount of time spent reading the blog. Other than that, I don't worry about how many people read me since I'm blogging for my own enjoyment as much as for that of others.

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  12. Congratulations and Happy 2nd Blogiversary to you Heather!You have a wonderful blog!

    I check my stats every now and then, mostly when I have some free time, which isn't all that often actually. They are fun to look at occasionally though! Looking forward to the next 2 years of your blog!

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  13. Happy Second, Heather! You've done an outstanding job with your Nutfield Genealogy.

    The cake looks yummy, though I suspect it's a virtual cake. I find it impossible not to check the stats periodically. My quiet graph jumps most amazingly when a powerhouse blogger kindly mentions a post. And the search terms are amazing.

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  14. Heather,

    Congratulations on your 2nd Blogiversary !!!

    I have a counter on my blogs that send me an email once a week. The counter reminds me that I need to post something new. Not being a writer like most of you, sometimes it takes a little time to put a new entry there.

    Having said that, this count that I have has a feature where I can find out how folks found the website. What were they searching for when they "hit" my Blog.

    I did the same thing for on a website for a farm. Farms have websites? Well this one does. The counter really helped me show the boss why he wanted to have a website. We made sure that his customers were able to find the site.

    I submit that we Bloggers can learn from that. In moving the website to a Blog platform (a new website on a traditional blogging site) we learned how traffic came to the site. I didn't pull down the website until the search engines could find the new site.

    So, for the pro's out there, and I am not one of them, paying attention to the hit count may not be as important as how your blog is found.

    The Genea-Blogging community may be unique, in that we follow and learn from each other, subscribing to those blogs that we learn from. So this community helps bring traffic to our blog. But, how does a client find your blog? Watching how your Blog is found or the number of hits may be meaningful for some Bloggers.

    Bills comment about Key Words is the short version of what I tried to say. I am blogging for my own education and enjoyment.

    Thanks for listening.

    Russ

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  15. Susan, it was a real cake! When my husband told the waiter it was our anniversary (wedding anniversary, not a blogoversary) the staff surprised us with this cake. We HAD to take a photo!

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  16. Happy Blogiversary to you!

    I don't check stats all that often just because I don't have the time. I do enjoy occassionally checking to see what search terms landed people on my blog. Sometimes it's interesting, other times it's humorous and still other times I just go "huh?"

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  17. Happy Birthday Blog Anniversary ~~~~ nice blog... have a view of my blog when free.. http://www.lonelyreload.com (A Growing Teenager Diary) .. do leave me some comment / guide if can.. if interested can follow my blog...

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  18. Happy belated blogiversary Heather! As you know, I've been flying under the radar, but I always make time to read Nutfield! Keep up the great work and thanks for being an amazing geneablogging role model. All the best, Jennifer

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