Statistics Saturday on an April Fool’s Day

And with that we have officially the start of a fresh month, and I like to take that as a chance to review a bunch of numbers, in this case, about what my blog is doing. Mostly that’s being read. In particular, according to WordPress’s statistics page, some the old page and some the new:

I had 1,053 page views here in March 2015. This is up from February, but only technically: there were 1,046 that month. Both are down an insignificant amount from January’s 1,071. The number of visitors has been drifting faintly downward too, to 483 in March, compared to 505 in February and 533 in January. I doubt any of this is a significant change — the views per visitor went from 2.01 in January to 2.07 in February to 2.18 in March. Possibly I’m not doing that terrifying self-promotion and marketing effectively enough, although I do feel better-engaged with my readers lately.

Readers maybe like me more too: I’m recorded with 443 likes in March, a high for me on record. This is up dramatically from February’s 345 and January’s 382. Comments are up, also, growing from January’s 93 and February’s 99 to a full 113. This is short of December 2014’s current-record 138, but not riotously short, I think.

The blog starts the month at 15,664 total views, with 551 WordPress followers and some number following me on Twitter.

The most popular articles the past month have been:

• Curing the Hiccoughs in Rabbits, in which I discovered a cure by accident.
• Betty Boop: Stopping The Show, one of my ongoing string of cartoon reviews.
• An Open Apology To Tina Fay, a report from the dream world.
• The Big Picture, about our barely considering whether to buy a new TV set. We’re feeling more like just waiting with the old one, now, really.
• Cleaning Up Hamburg’s Nightclub District, based on the real-world news about buildings enabled with the power to piddle right back at you.

And finally, the most inexplicably popular part of these monthly reviews: lists of countries. The country sending me the most readers was the United States, as ever, with 868 of them. Canada sent 52, the United Kingdom 20, New Zealand 17, Spain 15, and Australia 14. Sending a single reader each were Austria, Belarus, Finland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Puerto Rico, Romania, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey. The repeats from last month are Finland, Romania, and Turkey; Turkey is on a three-month streak.

My shameless ploy to grab Indian readers seemed to work, as my notes yesterday said I had 17, although WordPress’s statistics page today only admits to 5. I don’t understand that. Also yesterday it claimed I had five readers from the “European Union”, but it doesn’t list that at all today. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.