June 11, 2006

Visitors from around the world.

I'm intrigued by the Site Meter "world map," which shows where in the world my last 100 or 500 visitors came from. You see the dots all over the map, and you can click on them. If you do, you can see the "referring URL." Often, I'm touched. At first. Someone in Egypt is reading me. Why did they come here? I've been hanging out on Site Meter long enough to understand those visitors from around the world.

10 comments:

Jennifer said...

Seems like an odd word to use. Must be an ESL thing. I suppose searching for porn in Arabic wouldn't yield quite as much.

Beau said...

Maybe the come for the same reason as me. A particular perspective into life in a medium college city - USA. I haven't found another site with quite the same 'flavor'.

I don't come for the posts relating in way to US politics as the comments don't allow for a neutral discussion and other blogs do this better.

I do however, very much like your posts about Wisconsin such as your post about Wausau. You do this very well and it's nice that you usually post an opinion or two along with the tour as opposed to throwing up an URL, standing back and letting a free for all develop.

In the early 70's I deadheaded rental cars throughout the states ending up with time on hands in Madison. The town/city was like being dropped into a Norman Rockwell painting. People were kind, hospitable, and genuinely interested and accepting of people from other parts of the world. Madison and the people I met, reflected a generosity of spirit that has stayed with me to this day.

JohnF said...

Who's that guy out in the Pacific? Is that Hawaii, or some one lost at sea signaling for help?

Watch the comments closely...

Jennifer said...

That used to be me! I used to be able to spot myself out there in the Pacific when Ann would post the map.

Now, I'm just another dot in the South.

Sharon said...

I'm a college student, and spent the last 5 months in Athens, GR. I read you consistently, so that's where the Greece dot came from a few weeks ago.

chuck b. said...

FYI, if anyone wants a worldwide audience, all you have to do is put up some pictures of Harry Potter. Or better yet, Hermione Granger. That's what I did. After Google Images cached my site, 20 different people came every day just from Brazil just to see pictures of Hermione. And she's big in Islamic countries too, esp. Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, but also Bahrain and UAE.

Ann Althouse said...

Sharon: Yeah, that's been my other theory. It's Americans abroad. Americans abroad and people googling odd things that happen to bring them here (where they don't even get what they wanted).

Chuck: You have to get a good Google rank too, but once you have it, you can just position yourself to attract traffic from people who don't really want to read your blog. I happened to get a lot of people the other day who were googling for "Zarqawi dead photos" or something. I was coming up on the first page, based on some damn thing I wrote months ago.

Unknown said...

Wow, it's incredible what kind of information they get, including the resolution of the monitor I'm using! Whoa.

Kevin said...

I'm US military reading from bahrain

Ann Althouse said...

Kevin: Thanks for reading. I hope all is well.