Keeping Score

(That's me, second from the right. And no, I am not standing ten paces ahead.)

I spotted this on a t-shirt in Israel and chuckled. At 5'8", and with all respect to the Japanese, I have long thought that I, too, would be big in Japan. At least among men my age.

But I don't know that for certain. What I do know is that I'm massive in Manilla. Or was. Here's my story. It takes a while to develop. Please bear with me.

***

So that blog authors have some sense what of their blog is being looked at and by whom, Blogger.com, host of this blog, has a special feature/tab called Stats, which, as the name suggests, tracks a variety of blog site stats, all based upon Pageviews (when someone actually opens a blog page in a web browser).

The stats don't get very specific; no individual names nor anything personally identifiable; I don't know who you are (though as a spin on Descartes: You read, therefore, I know that you are). 

The data breaks down into three categories and then some subcategories.

First, there is the category for Posts, which simply counts the number of times a specific blog post or entry has been opened -- not necessarily read, just opened. It's pretty straight forward, and lets the blogger know in relative terms what's hot, and what's not.

Here, for instance, is the Posts data taken from my blog a second ago (covering the month 5/11-6/9):

As you can see, "Tall Tales From My REMoir is the runaway favorite, though it's good to see that "Where To Go And Make-out In Eger" is still getting some looks. I had great fun with that one, especially the Sarah Palin/Joker photo.

The second category is Traffic Sources which, if opened, details three sub-categories: Referring URLs, Referring Sites, and Search Keywords.

I do not know what a Referring URL is, or does, nor do I know what a Referring Site is, or does, nor do I know how knowing what those stats refer to would possibly increase my knowledge in any useful way.

However, the last of the three, Search Keywords, is helpful. It tells me what it was people were looking for when they came upon my blog. (Search Keywords change all the time depending upon who's online when, looking for what, and some are pretty funny: "little sex eger" (Eger of eager?) and "men of israel hot outtakes" (outtakes or latkes?) are two of my favorites. More on Search Keywords in a minute.)

Finally, the third Stats category, Audience, is made up of the sub-categories Pageviews by Browsers, Pageviews by Operating Systems, and Pageviews by Countries.

The first piechart shows my audience as orangey slices of various browsers, most of whom I've never heard of.

The second piechart shows my audience as orangey slices of operating systems, and surprise! -- Windows, looking a bit like Pac Man at 84% of the pie, is gobbling up all the other operating systems.

So, what do those piecharts mean? Beats me. Nor do I know how they could be of any possible value (What could it possibly matter that someone using Rockmelt looked at the blog?). Except to affirm that while Microsoft still has an operating system monopoly, when people are given a browser option, 75% will choose a non-Microsoft product. But do I really need pies to tell me that? It's common knowledge, isn't it? Most of us are chained to Microsoft, but we don't like it.

The only stat that actually informs is Pageviews by Countries (though, as an English teacher I wonder if it shouldn't be Pageviews by Country. I am not certain, however; grammar is not my forte). Whatever its proper phrasing, this stat gives raw numbers of which country has viewed how many pages. It doesn't tell you what pages, just the aggregate number. So, for example, if someone within the U.S. looked at five different pages I've written for this blog, those five looks would show up in the total U.S. Pageviews.

I can check all of the above stats by the current day, the current week, the current month, or all-time. For instance, as of right now, June 10, 4:54 a.m. EST, I have accumulated 3,159 Pageviews since I began this blog in January. I don't know if that total is good or bad. What I do know is that if I was a major league baseball player, and those page hits were base hits, I'd be #15 on baseball's exclusive 3000 hit club, just ahead of George Brett (3,154), just behind Cal Ripkin, Jr. (3,184), and only 1098 away from breaking all-time leader Pete Rose's record (4,256). If page hits were base hits I would be very cool.

Okay, so now that you have some sense of the Blogspot.com data, here comes the plot thickener, the statistical roux.

In the chart above, in mid-May, you can see that there was some kind of Pageview boom going on. Daily Pageviews, which had been hovering at 20 through March and April spiked during the May hitting streak, reaching a high of 66 on May 16. Even though the decline since the May 16 peak has been as precipitous as the rise to it, Pageviews are still coming in, although at a rate lower than their pre-climb average (It's just a slump; my blog will snap out of it).

Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of Pageviews (866) over this period were of my April 21 "Tall Tales From My REMoir," leading me to conclude, Well, now this is fan-tastic, The world is finally catching on. REMoir: writer's field of the future!

Flattered, though still humble (of course), I began looking more closely at the stats. To see what else I could learn about my wonderful readers around the world, and their thirst to know about REMoir. I wanted to know: where do they come from? What are their ways? Etc.

For this, I had to go to the Pageviews by Countries/Country data. It turns out that for the past month the Philippines has been going crazy over my blog, outnumbering even the U.S. for Pageviews for the same period. In terms of my blog, during this boom I wasn't just big in the Philippines, I was massive. (I have always liked the Philippines, their culture and ways. Smart people.)

Placing the increase of Pageviews for "Tall Tales..." alongside the increase of Pageviews in the Philippines, I began to wonder: What could account for the Philippine wave of interest in REMoir? What's behind the surge?

So I looked even closer at the stats, moving from Pageviews by Countries (Country) to Search Keywords.

Here is what I saw:

I am no master statistician, but even so basic a cross reference of Search Keywords to Pageviews by Countries (Country) indicates that the Filipinos/a were not really interested in the genius of REMoir but rather in the possible glamour or grotesqueness of braces. Of the 92 searches shown above, only 12 actually refer to this site. Everything else is braces, braces, braces. How then, did all those Filipinos/a end up here, or more specifically, at the "Tall Tales" post? Apparently, because in that "Tall Tales" entry I refer to my braces-wearing youth, and included a web-pirated photo of what braces might look like on teeth and gums whose lips had been retracted like Alex's eyelids in A Clockwork Orange.

Search engines doing what search engines do, they delivered all those braces-seeking Filipinos/a to my door. All those Pageviews, all those 866 Pageviews, are, in the final analysis, all a mistake, a bunch of orthodontically obsessed Filipinos/a, guided by their crooked cuspids, simply stumbling onto this site. Had people in the Philippines been happier with their teeth, I never would have fallen into the trap of admiring my own popularity, or of believing that REMoir is catching fire in the world. *** Still, though humble, I am not proud. I liked seeing the Pageviews spike, even if I know now that it was all an illusion. That is why, I am going to conclude this blog entry thus: Braces! Braces! Braces! Aparatos de ortodoncia!  Aparatos de ortodoncia!

Pete Rose -- I'm coming for you!