It's been awhile since I've done a post about site traffic and the Google Analytics map, and since I'm procrastinating about getting some other work done, I thought, why not do one today? So here it is:
Google recently updated their analytics tools, making it easier to view your site information by the day, week, month, or year, so I decided to see how I've done since I started tracking the site traffic for the blog and for my work site,
elliotblake.com. Here's what I've learned: for the period of 6/17/08 through yesterday, 12/9/08, elliotblake.com has received 504 visits from 20 countries (458 of those from the U.S., which is no surprise), and from 175 cities. A big chunk of this traffic is due to my being on
LinkedIn, and another, bigger chunk is from an ad I placed on entertainment industry site Cynopsis.com and its daily email newsletter, offering my services as a freelance writer. So, to the fine and discerning people from the entertainment centers of New York, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Burbank, and here in Atlanta, who saw the Cynopsis ad and visited the site (some of you more than once, I can tell from the numbers) - thanks for checking me out. I'm currently available for writing, story editing, and producing work.
Traffic to the blog has also been brisk (for the personal blog of a non-famous person, anyway). For the period of 10/2/08 through 12/9/08, I've received 684 visits from 14 countries and 123 cities. That's 180 more visits to the blog than the website, in a little more than half the time since I've been tracking, but from fewer locations; the blog has had more repeat visitors, which makes sense, since it's updated more frequently than elliotblake.com.
Anyway, for my wife who likes these things, I've made a couple of composite maps which show my global reach. Here's the country map:
Green countries have only visited elliotblake.com; blue countries have visited the blog and the website; and red countries have only visited the blog. (And because those countries are red on the map, they either voted Republican in the last election or they're communists.)
Here's the city composite map, showing hits from both the blog and the website:
I'm spreading like measles, only less virulent and more entertaining. (At least
I think so.)
That's enough procrastination for one day. Back to work.
-EB
Great poster. Here's the Elliot version. Well one of two Elliot versions, depending on how I feel at any given moment:
I'm either "The Man..."
Or "Dope."
Green countries have only visited elliotblake.com; blue countries have visited the blog and the website; and red countries have only visited the blog. (And because those countries are red on the map, they either voted Republican in the last election or they're communists.)
I'm spreading like measles, only less virulent and more entertaining. (At least I think so.)
And as I've also previously mentioned, my wife is a data connoisseur; she deals with data every day, and is really interested in the visual representation of quantitative information to explain studies and provide context. So she was really in love with CNN's election map as operated by the map maestro, John King. It turns out Laura wasn't the only person into the map - so was The Daily Show's John Oliver (who once got his butt kicked, along with teammate John Hodgman, in charity scrabble tournament by my sister-in-law Elaine). But where Laura sees potential for good in the map, John Oliver sees...evil (worth watching):
That's Hugh Jackman, best known to comic book geeks as Wolverine of the X-Men. Yeah, he's a handsome guy, but I can only assume that I was not chosen because the editors at People did not see any pictures of me running along the beach without my shirt on, which happened a lot while I was in San Diego this past August. It's a travesty.
I think you can click the map for a larger view. What I like about it is all the dots, each representing a geographic location from which a hit originated. It looks like some kind of global Elliot outbreak, which my ego really digs. The bigger dots indicate a larger quantity of hits from that region, which is why the entire southeast of the United States is obscured by a giant dot representing the Atlanta metro area. Yesterday, I got a hit from Hong Kong. That's just cool.
DECATUR, GA - 9/17/08 (Photos by Gary W. Meek, Copyright 2008 Agnes Scott College)
Here (above), I'm pretending like I know what I'm talking about while describing a scene I particularly enjoyed in the book and in the film. I was very impressed by how the filmmakers, one of whom was Satrapi, the author and artist of the book, were able to let go of the narrative form inherent to the source material - a comic book - to fully take advantage of the medium of animation. The scene pictured above is from the sequence in the book where teenage Marjane goes through a growth spurt. It was represented very differently in the movie, but the overall effect was the same. Well done.
Here are the panel participants in a staged post-panel photo opportunity. We're all hanging out by the ashtray - but no one is smoking, except for my shoes. I always think it's appropriate to wear my flame-adorned Chuck Taylors at public speaking engagements (like I've had so many).
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