Stats Paradise : Boris, Brian Coleman and Fisting

The Friends of Freer
Last Tuesday I did something with the blog I swore that I wouldn't. I put a stats counter on. The reason I didn't want to was because I didn't want to know. Not because I was worried that no one was reading the blog, I couldn't care less really. No, I didn't want to write blogs to chase hits. I'm naturally competetive and I knew that as soon as I put a counter on, I'd start chasing hits and analysing why people visited the blog.

Now why did I change my mind? Because one of the Friends of Freer posted a comment about the "20 people who read the blog". It wasn't the fact that they'd implied I wrote a crap, boring blog which bothered me. It was the fact that I didn't know. I couldn't refute them, that got my goat. It was like being infected with a nasty virus. It spread and spread till I just succumbed. Off I went and installed statcounter (The little box at the bottom of the blog page).

Anyway, having installed the counter a week ago, I find some of the info fascinating. We've had 11 visits from the US, 5 from Canada, we've even managed one from China, as well as a host from around Europe. Strange that they are interested in Barnet? Well actually they seem interested in Boris and my dislike of the Daily Mail???? It seems that the top 5 searches to find me are "Barnet Eye" 22%, Brian Coleman 15%, Boris Budget reserves 6%, Friends of Freer 4%, Patrick McGoohan 4% and a whole host of others on 1%. Mind you the free counter I use only keeps details of the last 500 hits, so it changes. One unexpected thing was I got a massive spike yesterday when Dave Hill linked to me from his Guardian Blog - so it seems people who read the Guardian and like Dave Hill must be interested in Boris. Maybe this is the secret of Boris's great popularity.

I guess it is worth saying something about getting search engine hits at this stage. My Brother in law worked for Microsoft when they were developing the MSN search engine. He asked me what I thought the most popular search was? I had about 10 guesses before I gave up - The answer (this was a good few years ago - it may have changed) - Fisting - Oh well,I thought I'd put it on my labels to try and garner a few more hits - just what I said I'd never do.