Attention: The following is not a paid endorsement!
A few weeks back, while trolling around the Internet and scoping out other blogs, I made the observation that a quite a few had an icon attached for something identified as Sitemeter. Sitemeter is a specialty website that can provide basic diagnostic information regarding your presence on the Web. Basic service is offered free of charge, along with a lot of adverts, and of course there is an upgrade available for the professional version which begins at $6.95. But for free, you get a boatload of statistical detail!
While you may be not know specifically who is visiting your blog at any given time, you will be advised of Internet Service Provider, city state and country, date and time of day, plus factual background on the visitor's operating system, type of browser, monitor resolution, color depth, country, continent, time zone and more.
To me, the most useful metric is "referral". Here you can see exactly what brought a fellow Internaut to you. Here at the Random Access Thought, since so much noise is made about sound, many trollers stop in by way of Google with significant "sound" keywords while others plug in with nothing more than"n2fnh".
One of the fun things you can do is to key on the observed ISP address. Not all ISPs may offer a home page, but many do and in the case of ISPs in countries outside the USA, it can be visually appealing to see how creatively those pages are decked out, especially if they carry an ethnic subtext to the design. And of course, you can poke around and probe for additional content or pathways too.
So! Got a blog? Get a Sitemeter! Free! Factual! Fun!
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