Statistics

I took a statistics class at university this past year, and it was deadly dull. But when it comes to other types of stats, like sports, weather and anything else you can name, I'm a big fan. I am especially keen on delving into the records of those of you who take time to visit this little corner of the internet.

Most people who run any kind of website use some sort of service to keep track of visitor statistics. Google Analytics is a relatively new, but popular, product. I use the free version of the service provided by statcounter.

This service provides interesting detail about the user, including country of origin, IP, referring link, etc. One of these categories is browser version. Here is the breakdown for this blog:

- Firefox 2.0.0: 52%

- MSIE 6.0: 25%

- MSIE 7.0: 11%

- Firefox 1.5.0: 5%

- Safari 1.2: 2%

- Mozilla 4.0: 2%

- Firefox 1.0.7: 2%

- MSIE 5.5: 1%

Now, I use Firefox 2.0.0 and my traffic to this site is probably significant enough to skew the stats a bit, but with overall Firefox/Mozilla use at 61%, it seems like most of my readers are making the smart choice. If you're still using Microsoft Internet Explorer, in any way, shape, or form, it's time to switch.

Here is a look at the country breakdown for the last 100 hits:

United States: 32

Canada: 26

France: 7

Malaysia: 6

United Kingdom: 6

India: 3

Ireland: 2

Philippines: 2

several countries at 1 hit each

Keyword analysis is often a fun thing to look at, but unfortunately most visitors to this blog find their way from other sites and not search engines. One user searching for "gb pounds and cdn $" would have found their way to this post but I'm sure they could have found far more helpful information elsewhere.

For those of you who track your stats, do you have anything interesting to share? Leave a comment.