Searching For Answers

I like stats. Always have. It's a wonder I don't like baseball as that must be stat heaven but then there's always cricket. And even footy (soccer of course) is becoming more stat heavy as we can now find out everything from how far a player 'travelled' and how many completed passes he made during a game. I just care about how many goals he scored !

Is this leading anywhere ?

Well yes. I like looking to see where my blog visitors have come from (from 84 different countries and counting) and also how they made their way to my posts. It's all quite interesting really, from a mad stats point of view.

Many come directly so must have my blog address in their favourites and bless you all.

Some more come from other blogs that have my blog on their read list. Bless you again and please keep coming.

Others read my blog from a reader and so their stats don't appear at all. Shame on you ;-)

And finally, some come to my blog as the result of using a search engine, usually Google or Yahoo.

Now the searches being put into these engines can be most informative and even slightly worrying as I'm never quite sure how my blog appears as a result ! If she was still alive, I'm sure that Janet Munro would be pleased to know that people still search for her online but maybe she wouldn't be so pleased to learn that when the word topless is added, people end up on my blog. Ok I used those 3 words a long time ago when discussing mortal sins so I guess this is my punishment. My blog is 5th in the results for Janet Munro topless. I'm so proud.

Then there are the golfers. My blog hit rate goes up quite a lot at weekends during the LPGA season as I once mentioned Paula Creamer. I never posted a photo of her or anything so quite how my blog comes up when someone uses the image search on Yahoo is beyond me - but it does. Sadly these visitors don't seem to hang around for a read as like I said, the relevant post doesn't have any photos of the very tasty Ms. Creamer, with her long tanned legs and very, very short skirts and her lithe youthful body with just a hint of sweat........damn I'm heading back into mortal sin territory now.

I still get welcome visitors who have searched for anything to do with "walking back to happiness" presumably because they like the old Helen Shapiro song. I guess by now she must be pretty old too. Again they must be somewhat disappointed to find my blog post about getting healthy by walking ! Sorry.

But the search that gets me by far the most visitors at this time of year is one where any combination of the following words are used. "golf cart parades, decorating golf carts, Christmas golf cart parades" and so on. You get the picture.

My blog stats light up like....a decorated Christmas cart and very happy I am too. I'm not sure how many searchers are happy with what they find but most enlarge my photos about decorated Christmas carts so maybe they are.

I also hope that when new visitors come to my old posts via a search, that they click on the blog title and visit my latest posts and then become regular visitors.

And just to help things along, I'll leave you all with the following, obviously unconnected statement :-

Walking back to happiness can be fun when your companions are Janet Munro topless and Paula Creamer but even more fun when you are all riding on a golf cart decorated for Christmas.

I know. I'm shameless.