My Blog - 10,000 Page Views

Entrance Piazza, Sahl Hasheesh

I thought I’d stop and do a geeky summary of my blog so far, now that I’ve passed the landmark number of 10,000 page views since it started (I wanted to write this last week, but I was 3 page views too short!).

A total of 10,000 page views sounds quite an impressive number but, to be honest, I don’t set much store by the accuracy of the figures put out by Google Blogger. They’ve never really matched up – the number of page views by country never matches with the total of page views each week; maybe it counts for each blog read on one counter and by visitor for another, but it’s not very clear. Still, 10,000 sounds good and that’s what’s important.

If you sign up for the blog to be delivered to you by email, you won’t be counted in the statistics that I’m reporting here. I don’t even know how many people have opted to receive it by email. I’m kept completely blind to that side of the blog. So, the statistics here are for visitors to the actual blog page.

I think the most exotic country (a very subjective thing, of course) I can remember reaching was the Solomon Islands. I’ve received the most views from the UK – these outnumber the second country (Switzerland) by about 150%. This probably demonstrates that despite living outside of the UK for coming up to 10 years, I’m still really fairly rooted in my homeland. Countries that came in from 3-10 as being my most frequent visitors, which all in turn fall quite a bit behind Switzerland, are in order: USA, Russia, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, and Ireland.

It seems that 30% of you are using Google Chrome (which I use, too). It’s followed closely by Safari (28%) users and then 20% with Explorer. A further 11% use Firefox.

Over half of you (55%) are using Windows. Apple products come next with iPhone (18%), MacIntosh (13%), and iPad (8%). Surprisingly, Android is fairly low, coming in next with 2%.

The search keywords used to land on my blog are fairly predictable; the one that kept me amused for ages, but has now dropped off the top ten list, was “sahl hasheesh naked”. Other than what’s totally predictable (eg, “searchingthedream blog”), “re-entry visa” has featured more than once, and a search for the baron palace hotel, and a search for a massage in Sahl Hasheesh.

My biggest surprise for Referring Sites was the goodreads site (6th in Referring URLs), and I guess this is where most of my US readers have come from (thank you!). Since I really haven’t sold many books, I’m surprised the goodreads site had any impact. I’d also like to thank those from the ShareKnowledge site for their interest (2nd in Referring Sites) – I’m not sure anyone from there is currently reading, but thanks anyway! This is also probably a reason for the high UK readership since most on ShareKnowledge are UK citizens (as far as I know).

My most read posts are hugely influenced by whether anyone has commented or not. If someone makes a comment, the readership for that post usually increases by at least 50% (I guess people go back to the page to read the comment).

Nevertheless my most popular post by quite a bit is Sahl Hasheesh – First Snorkeling on 26 October 2013, despite the fact that it had no comments. I’m very surprised by this, but maybe it’s because it comes just before I broke my foot (Hurghada – First Trip to Hospital on 27 October 2013), which itself comes in at 6th most popular overall or 3rd most popular of those that haven’t received any comments.

The second most popular post (no comments) was Flashback – The Decision (23 Sept 2013), which was about my decision to move to Egypt and is perhaps key to the blog, so not so surprising.

Posts in positions 3-5 all had comments (the ones on Japan were deleted to protect privacy); in order these were: The Netherlands – Renewing a Friendship, Basel – White Dinner, and Japan – Some Sightseeing. This might also have something to do with them being “sociable” posts, where presumably friends of friends mentioned therein may have been pointed to them.

Posts in positions 7-9 all had comments or I’d posted a link to it on facebook: An Awakening (describing my return to Zurich), Egypt – Journey to Luxor, Sheila’s Words – Egypt for the First Time. Well done to Sheila for writing one of the most popular entries!

At place number 10, no comments, and 4th of no comments/promotion posts, was Flashback – The Party. I was quite surprised about this but it supports my conclusion that “sociable” blogs may be passed on to others more.

I thought that my Rats posts would have been popular, since for me that was the most dramatic or stressful time so far in Egypt, but maybe the topic just doesn’t appeal. I can’t understand that at all.