Some of you are going "hmmm" with me... questions?

Inga, a regular reader, said the sitemeter shows her as being in Overbook, Kansas, which is quite a distance from where she lives.  This is normal.  I am with Centurylink, formerly Embarq.  They show me to be in towns as far as two hundred miles away.  Oh, and they move me from time to time, for some reason only they know.  Many stat-counters show my location as Warrensburg, fifty miles from here.   If you are with AOL, no location is given.  If my Kansas City Russian friend visits from his work location, he shows up as being in Illinois (or he did the last time I checked).
Nancy, if someone is on the blog for long periods but only show up as reading one page during their visit, I  always assume they either went to sleep or walked away from the computer.  But the person I showed in the last entry read many, many pages.  Another thing, lots of people show as being here zero seconds.  That's not accurate, because my husband reads my blog daily and diligently, and his time spent reading an entry usually shows as zero.  
If there are other questions on this subject, I will edit this entry and answer them here.
Sitemeter has a free version; that's what I use.  Go to sitemeter.com to get it.

Things that make me go "hmmm".

Longtime readers know how addicted I am to my sitemeter.  More and more, people are keeping their browsing private.  This means I don't see their location, but I am still informed of a few details about them. For instance, even if you are using private browsing, I am able to see if you have a Mac.  I can tell which browser you are using, and which ones you have on your computer that you are not using.  All this useless information fascinates me.  In fact, you folks can check it out yourselves.  Just scroll down on the right-hand side of my blog until you see this:

Click on it and snoop around all you like.  I could fix it so nobody can see it except me, but that's no fun.  

OK, here's the exciting part:  somebody has recently discovered me, and they are laboriously reading back through my blog one entry at a time.  I can understand this; when I first discovered Pioneer Woman, I spent hours going back over her blog... which was much more interesting and funny in those days, but I see why:  After all those years, she has pretty much blogged about everything she has ever done.  If you want to see her best entries, go read the ones from five or six years ago, like THIS ONE.  You will laugh out loud.  

But I digress.  

  

Meet my newest fan (or stalker, whatever).  He or she has a Mac and uses Hughes satellite to connect to the Internet.  The location is unknown.  This person is spending hours reading my blog.  You can see they read thirteen pages on this visit.  Since I'm no Pioneer Woman, I very seldom have people spend this much time reading past entries.  Usually when they do, they are reading my mother's story, which is probably the most interesting thing on my blog.  
Come on, my new friend.  'Fess up.  Introduce yourself.  

Some of my readers speak

I've heard from a couple of my mysterious readers, although I still haven't found out who my Canadian follower is; he hasn't been back, so perhaps he got his fill after an hour of reading my past entries.  Sitemeter tells me that another Canadian emailed that post to somebody; maybe that was a friend of my stalker, letting him know I'm onto him?
Anyway.  I appreciate those of you who stepped forward and introduced yourselves.    
Meet Nancy:

Hi Donna! I'm your UMKC reader and I have a list of about 8 favorite blogs that I open in tandem each morning before I start working and occasionally at lunchtime. I'm not a teacher or the janitor, but a staff member who works with graduate students . . . I'm the thesis/dissertation format checker! I live in Independence so I like that I recognize the places you talk about in your blog and I was raised in rural Kansas so I enjoy the stories of your cows and gardening. I sent you a recipe one time for squash fries. I think I found your blog through a comment that you made on the Midtown Miscreant blog a couple of years ago. I really enjoy that you update nearly every day. I'm also big fan of the Pioneer Woman blog--I think I found her blog from yours, so thank you!

I remember you sending the recipe, Nancy, and I made those fries more than once.  

Here's Nita: 

I may show up as unknown. I found your blog on PW a long time ago and follow you on my blogger dashboard. My dh and I live in SWMo and have horses, garden and ride an HD Roadglide. I like the way you write and enjoy your stories. It is like visiting you and Cliff. Thanks for sharing!  

Candice said...

I read somewhere that only 9% of your readers will ever comment. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but there are some people out there that will LOVE your blog, but for various reasons, will never let you in on it.

Let me say I'm surprised to see a comment from Candice, because she has such a large following AND works as a nurse.  Oh, and has a couple of young children.  So I'm amazed she has time to comment on any blogs!  She is hilarious and outspoken.  I will warn you that her blog is not G-rated; if some curse words don't bother you, then you might want to read her views on child-raising HERE.  Get ready to laugh.  

If any more of you silent readers want to come out of the closet and introduce yourselves, feel free.  If not, that's all right; I appreciate every one of you, even the silent majority.

Sitemeter

I love checking my Sitemeter, not so much to see how many people have been here, but to see their location and what brought them here.  Most of the readers show up as spending zero minutes here, even when they've read and commented on an entry.   
Once in I find that someone has spent a lot of time reading on this site; now, if Sitemeter shows them as only reading one page and being here for forty-five minutes , I know they just clicked onto my blog and left the computer to do something else, like I often do.   Right now, though, there's someone in or near Calgary, Alberta, Canada who started at the beginning of this blog and is reading his/her way forward.  They've been on my blog for an hour and viewed thirty-eight pages!  
Quite often, I find people spending lots of time here reading my mother's story; I can understand that.  But I'm trying to imagine why anyone in Canada would be interested in the drivel I put into this thing on a day-to-day basis.
I have a reader who shows up as being at University of Missouri, Kansas City, which makes me wonder if a teacher is reading this, or perhaps the lowly janitor.  
There's a quite regular visitor who comes here by way of my daughter's blog almost daily and appears to be coming from Rutherford College, North Carolina.  Whoever that person is, she's using a Mac.  
Embarq users show up as being from towns that aren't even near where they really live, but at least the state is right.   
More and more, people come here showing up as "unknown", which means they're using the "open link in incognito window" option.  I wish they wouldn't do that; I don't get to see where they are!  At least I can tell what sort of operating system they use, and how long they stayed.  
Am I obsessive-compulsive?  You bet. 
Blogger folks, did you know we can get stats like these on our dashboard now?  It gives a lot of the same information in a different way; I'm used to my Sitemeter, so I'll probably keep it.    
Meanwhile, I wonder why so few of the people who read this mess ever comment.  I guess they just don't have anything to say.

A treefrog... and a brief explanation

This little fellow, about an inch long, is crawling around in the rain on the window in my computer room. I love the way tree frogs have little suction-cups on their toes.

I closed comments for myself, no other reason; I found myself worrying way too much about them... wondering why nobody comments, wondering why the same three wonderful ladies always comment (thanks, pals). That's it, pure and simple. Some day if I really feel brave, I'll take my Sitemeter off, although I'm pretty addicted to watching my traffic go up and down. I like seeing the Google searches that lead folks here. After all, that's how I found out about Swagbucks. Lately I've been using my Swagbucks to download music (free) from Itunes.

You'll know I've finally developed a backbone when you see me remove my Sitemeter.

Google searches leading to my blog

Thanks to my sitemeter, I'm able to see what brings people to this site.

The most common Google query leading here is "How long can a cold last". That's because of THIS POST, done almost two years ago.

The second Google search leading here has to do with ticks, and I do believe that every day, several people look at THIS POST and a picture of a tick bite I had on my back that caused the doctor to give me antibiotics, in case it was Lyme disease.

Since I did an entry about stimulus checks the other day, that's another item that brings people here from Google.

I usually get people looking for "how to build a round pen" (don't do it the way we did, by the way) and "hard-to-catch horses" (get yourself a horse that doesn't run when you walk out to get them... that's all you'll learn from me).

Of course there's the ever popular "Blue Springs Walmart" search, which leads folks to my Walmart rant. I set out to be at the top of the Google page for that search, and by george, I did it. I'm right below the commercial ad for Walmart, and have been ever since I made that entry.

Sitemeter can disappoint a person sometimes. Let's say you have two hundred visitors in a day, and figure you're getting pretty darned popular. Then you look at the details and see that most of them visited for zero seconds. That'll burst your bubble.

By the way, Blogger has a feature that would let me be omitted from Google searches, but that's no fun. It would destroy my illusion of having dozens of devoted followers.

Sitemeter

I've blogged about Sitemeter before, and how much I love, love, love it. I click on it and get all kinds of fascinating information about you, my readers. Not to mention a little mis-information. Locations, for instance.

My daughter and I use Sprint DSL. We're nowhere near Brinktown, Missouri... but that's how we come up on Sitemeter. Oh well, at least it's the right state.

I have a very regular reader (thanks for being interested, whoever you are) whose location is shown as Surrey, Prince Edward Island. Other places mentioned are Elyra, Ohio; Fort Worth, Texas; Plano, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Hendersonville, Tennessee, and Avon, Indiana.

Of course, many of these folks stumbled in here by way of Google; most of those don't stay long. And I can see that many of my regular readers arrive here after reading my AOL journal.

It's so interesting to see a little information about you folks. By the way, if you click on sitemeter, there on the right, you can see all the information for yourself.

So this morning I was looking at locations of recent readers and saw I had a visitor last night who is located at Rocky Mount, Missouri. He or she arrived here after reading my AOL journal. They stayed almost twenty minutes.

There's a former pastor of mine and his wife who live in that town of less than 1,600. Do you suppose they've stumbled onto my journal??? I know they have Internet.

Pastor? Faith? Are you out there? Hellooooooo!!!! If it's you, I miss you and love you both! Nobody inspires me to write sermon-poems any more.