Ever since I started this here blog thing, I’ve been really anal about keeping track of the “stats.” Apparently I’m not the only one, because there are literally zillions of ways that you can analyze your web traffic.
I’m making this post to share some of that behind-the-scenes knowledge with you, the readers, but also to honour a very special milestone.
Last weekend, for the first time ever, spam comments outnumbered legitimate comments.
That’s right, as of me writing this, we have a total of 1,033 comments — and 526 of them are spam. That leaves only 507 true comments. The spam is never seen because I force everyone to give a name and an email address when they comment (it can be fake!) and the first comment you make under that alias has to be approved before it’s posted.
There were a couple of comments on my dual-flush, dual-collector toilet post which verged on spam but which I let through anyway — they were more like shills — and a few random posts on hot-button topics attract one-off comments from people who have an agenda to push and a website to link to.
I try to be lenient, though, and so long as they sound like real people, I let them have their say.
Other interesting stats and facts:
We get between 50 and 100 visits on a regular day, but sometimes we can get up to 150 with a good conversation going, and the highest ever was 232 (the day that Amy, Keith and I all posted links to this blog on our facebook statuses — the day we went public, you might say).
Most of our traffic comes from people who link to us from other blogs — primarily Curtis at Endless Spin, but also some from H. Bergeron at R.U.Sirius and some from the Ripping Arseholes. (Gonna have to update my blogroll.)
We also get a fair bit of Google traffic — we’re the number one result for “absurd intellectual” and we must be near the top of the list for “naked men in gym change rooms” because that comes up in the referral logs all the freaking time. (UPDATE: We’re fourth from the top. Geez.)
In case you’re interested, I aim for three to five posts a day. Crunching the numbers, with 149 posts in January, we averaged 4.8 a day. Not too shabby. We slowed down a bit in February, with 123 posts, or an average of 4.4. Still pretty good! So far in March, we’ve got 91 posts with 18 days in the grave, so that’s an average of 5.05 — we’re back on track!
Keith and Amy and I are hoping to do more “special posts” like our French Onion Martini — but it does take time to pull those off. In the meantime, I’m hoping to start a semi-regular series of vintage book reviews. And cross your fingers, for “Cheese of the Week” started on Tuesday, and it will continue for the forseeable future (I love cheese).
I love that lots of my friends have started emailing me suggestions of things to blog about, and I feel bad that I haven’t gotten around to posting some of them yet. I do have over a dozen drafts in various stages of completion, and when somebody sends me a link, I like to give it its proper due.
Any other comments or questions, I’d be happy to answer, so leave ‘em in below. Let me know what you like or dislike, or would like to see more or less of, too.
Be anonymous, if you like! As always — thanks for reading!
Leave comments, suggestions
Grant Hamilton
One Response to “State of the Blog: Spammy”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
[...] In the two weeks since I posted that, for the first time, spam comments outnumbered legitimate comments, the level of spam has skyrocketed. Spam now outranks legitimate comments by 50% (there’s 951 [...]