During February 2003 on diamond geezer I kept myself busy counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a none-too thrilling daily feature called 'The Count'. A sort of 28-day tally chart. And I've continued to count those ten categories again, everyFebruary since, just to see if and how my life has changed. And blimey it has. Below are my counts for February 2006, accompanied by the previous statistics and some deep, meaningful pondering. Part 1 today, part 2 tomorrow.
Count 1 (Blog visitors): It's not been a normal month. I don't normally get random global visitors arriving in droves, but then I don't normally get a big scary link on Blogger's front page. I hate to think what the majority of people clicking through actually thought of my site (probably "what's all this rubbish about London, where's the filth?"). Any of you blogowners out there who crave a similar influx of visitors might be interested in the following figures:
• A mention on Blogger's front page is worth about 5000 extra visitors on the day you're top of the list. I was lucky - I got a whole weekend.
• One single day on Blogger's front page brings in twice as many additional visitors as a whole fortnight on the Bloggies shortlist.
• You stay on Blogger's special list for three weeks, gradually demoted one place each weekday, with additional visitor numbers decreasing sharply as you fall. But still not to be sniffed at.
• Virtually all the visitors who arrive speculatively never come back. 'Fame' is short-lived, transitory and ultimately unsustainable.
• Only a tiny handful of new visitors leave comments. Of these, many are either blatant spam or cringeworthy plugs for their own website (no I will not add you to my blogroll, you miserable parasites). Several other comments are from people who "just don't get it" and write something either tangential or plain barking. Which leaves a small number of pithy, incisive comments from an intelligent extended global audience. Nice to have you along. Total number of visitors to this webpage in February 2006: 42277
(2005: 9636) (2004: 6917) (2003: 2141)
Count 2 (Google searches): Alas, this count's buggered this month. Blogger didn't link 'directly' to my blog, it linked via its parent company Google. So I've tallied at least seven thousand extra 'search engine hits' this month which aren't really search engine hits at all. For what it's worth. Total number of Google referrals to this webpage in February 2006: 10473
(2005: 908) (2004: 947) (2003: 316)
Count 3 (Blog content): Well that's a relief. I'm always convinced every year that I'm writing far more than I was last year, but this turns out not to be the case. It looks like I'm really astonishingly consistent - about 500 words a day. Good, I'd hate to think my blogging was increasing out of control like an addiction or something. Total number of words in diamond geezer in February 2006: 15817
(2005: 16016) (2004: 16214) (2003: 14392)
Count 4 (Spam): Still surprisingly low, methinks, given the avalanche of speculative drivel that clogs the world's inboxes. My ISP still manages to block most incoming spam, thankfully, although numbers are sadly on the increase. The most prolific spam categories at the moment seem to include US stock options, Russian gibberish and the usual desperate willy-strengtheners. And the prize for the most desperate spam web address of the month goes to seehereplease.com (don't bother looking). Total number of spam emails I received in February 2006: 82
(2005: 54) (2004: 31) (2003: 30)
The Count 2006
