Blog--aversary

I finally got around to changing up the blog a bit. But, um, this yellow bowl of sunshine-y confection is not going to stay. I was playing, and then I ran out of energy. So Big Miss Sunshine it is right now. (That photo was taken on the day I started chemo. Oddly, it's one of the few I have of Seamus and I together during the cancer-go-round. Note to self: get new picture with Seamus. Not surprisingly, I have 5,672 photos of Chris and Seamus.)

But it's sort of appropriate that the blog looks like a giant birthday cake. Because tomorrow (the 17th) is my birthday and today is a blog-aversary of sorts. I actually started the blog on January 12, 2009. So technically, it was a year old back then. But that was also the anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis so the blog anniversary gets lost in that shuffle. Besides, I didn't have Google Analytics on January 12th. Nope, I didn't start obsessing over blog stats through Google Analytics until February 16th, 2009. So here's what Google tells me about my year in blog-land:

There have been 16,192 visits (these are different than "hits"; I don't know how except that one is less violent)

There were 6,874 "unique visitors" (I don't know what that says about the rest of you)

Page views totaled 24,305

And the average time spent on the blog was 2 minutes and 23 seconds (which means you are really fast readers!)

Visitors came from 118 countries

All 50 US states plus the District of Columbia eventually checked in for a visit.

The top 5 search words or phrases used to find the blog included some variation of "the dog lived," but number 6 was "Dr Karam UCLA." Number 7 was "butterflies" (mentioned a grand total of 1 time on my blog), and my own name was a distant number 10.

The blog that sent the most traffic over to my blog was qcreport.blogspot.com.  

Not coincidentally, the highest number of visitors to the blog in one day (at least that Google recorded) was 107...and that was the day (July 20, 2009) I posted the interview with Quinn Cummings of qcreport.blogspot.com about her book, Notes from the Underwire (which is very good and very funny). The next highest was 88 on Friday, March 20th which was the day after my second chemo treatment when presumably you were all checking in to see if we'd have a repeat of the horrific white blood cell crash that followed the first chemo.(I disappointed you. Unless of course, you were actually hoping that I was okay post-chemo)

What Google calls the "top landing page" was the Butterflies and Blogs post. This makes me think a lot of 9 year old girls spend time doing google searches. With this knowledge you can fully expect a blog post called "Unicorns and Rainbows" very, very soon. No, wait. This blog is not appropriate for 9 year old girls. Never mind.

Google Analytics gives me a whole lot of other information, but frankly, I have no idea what it means. Oh, and I have google ads on the site and that has earned me $24.05. Well, it will once Google mails me a check (and I think I have to earn $100 before that happens. I'm going to keep my day job.).

I'm pretty sure none of those stats matter (but aren't you glad I bored you with them?). The blog was an important part of my process in dealing with the whole breast cancer odyssey. And I'm kind of attached to it, even if we are having issues right now.

Happy Blog-aversary to all of you who've been reading along with me. Thanks!

(P.S. Apparently there's been some confusion once again about leaving comments. I believe if you click on the word "comments" below this post--it may or may not have a number in front of it, such as "2 comments"--you will get a pop-up window which will show you the comments made and there will be a box where you can type in your comments. And there's a test to make sure you aren't sending spam. Because I want all discussion of prescription drugs and singles websites to come from me and me only).