74.215.252.xxx is at the top of our list

Greetings Loyal Readers!!

 

I am constantly surprised by some of the emails I get from people in response to our travel blog, especially from people I didn't even realize were keeping up with our travels.  It's very nice to know we're not just writing for our own benefit and historical record, but also so other people are able to share in our experiences.  Yesterday, I decided to review the site statistics for the website, which include visitor and traffic reports for the travel blog as well as my main website, www.xiante.com.  My hosting provider provides a number of useful tools for administering the website, including the ability to generate reports on the number of unique visitors to the site; whether those visitors accessed the site via direct link, bookmark, or through a search engine; the most viewed pages on the site; the most common keywords used when the site appears in search engine results; even the type of operating system and browser visitors are using when viewing the site.  I hadn't reviewed the site stats in a long time so I was curious to see how they had changed since we embarked on our trip.

 

My first impression of the stats is that we actually have a lot more readers than I suspected, which I feel very honored by.  I hope our posts about some of the wonderful places we've visited will inspire some of you to also visit this part of the world or at least motivate you to get out and travel somewhere.  Equally significant, however, is my hope that news of our negative experiences, from my disaster with trying to ship something using DHL to our being robbed in Lima, Valparaiso and Buenos Aires, will spread and make people think twice about putting themselves through the same misery and frustration.  By writing about these experiences on our blog, given our broad readership, I feel some vindication in the sense that our experiences and recommendations will have a greater likelihood of influencing other people's decisions, especially when we urge you to consider alternatives.  Negative publicity hurts businesses and it hurts tourism simply because bad news travels a hell of a lot faster than good news, especially over the internet.  And nothing is more important to the success of a business, city, or country than it's image and reputation.

 

For instance, had DHL acknowledged their complete and utter failure on any one of multiple levels when I used them to ship something; had they attempted to rectify the situation as promised or at the very least, refunded my money when they ultimately cost me a hell of a lot more than the $75 for the failed shipment, I would have accepted their failures and maybe even considered using them again; but, because of the way they blew me off, I will use every method, venue and opportunity available to let other people know not to use them, especially since they are discontinuing their domestic services and focusing only on international shipping.  If you actually expect your shipment to reach it's intended international destination, just use FedEx.  I think Sean and I have both adequately expressed our disdain for Buenos Aires already.  Like DHL, my recommendation is to bypass Buenos Aires completely if you plan to make your way down to South America.  There are nicer places to visit where people actually go out of their way to make sure you leave with a positive impression of their city and country.  Go somewhere where you will be made to feel welcome and where the money you spend will be appreciated.  Okay, I'll step off the soap box for now. 

 

Back to the site statistics, I would like to share some of the more interesting pieces of information I've found for those of you who might be interested.  Since we're only halfway through December, I'll give you November's stats since that is the last full month for which I have data.

 

Visitors

Unique Visitors:  378

Number of Visits:  1036 (2.74 visits per visitor)

Pages Visited:  9086 (8.77 pages per visit)

 

Top Five Visitors

74.215.252.xxx

88.2.180.xx

68.107.23.xxx

190.42.106.xx

131.167.51.xxx

 

Are you one of the Top Five???  Click here for a simply way to see your IP address [link].  P.S. We already know who #1 is. 

 

Days with Most Visitors

November 26th  (64 visits)

November 11th  (61 visits)

November 4th  (58 visits)

November 5th  (57 visits)

November 2nd  (55 visits)

 

Note: In general, weekends see about half as many visitors as weekdays so a lot of you are clearly reading the blog at work, LOL!

 

Visit Duration

5-15 minutes: 40 (3.8%)

15-30 minutes: 34 (3.2)

30-60 minutes: 41 (3.9%)

60+ minutes: 22 (2.1%)

Average Length of All Visits: 271 seconds (about 5 minutes)

 

Operating Systems & Browsers

Windows:  91.3%

Macintosh:  2.7%

Internet Explorer:  53.5%

Firefox:  37.9%

 

Note: Why are more than half of you still using Internet Explorer?  Firefox is such a far more superior browser!

 

Connect to Site From

96.4% connect to the site through a direct link or bookmark

2.1% connect through a search engine (Google is most popular)

1.3% connect through a link from another webpage (i.e. facebook, couchsurfing)

 

Note: 34.5% of visitors add our site to their favorites or bookmarks.

 

Top Search Keyphrases

san diego slut

price of coke per gram

gave head coke

darkroom public zurich

coke price per gram

 

Note: These are for the 2.1% of times people are connecting to our blog through a search engine.  It's interesting to see what people are searching for online, and especially interesting to see the search keywords and keyphrases they use for the results to produce a link to our blog.  The keyphrases listed above are just some of the more interesting ones. 

 

That's all for now, but before I sign off, I'd really like to express my sincerest thanks to all of you for traveling with us by following along on the blog.  Even if you just visit our site to look at the pictures, it makes me feel a lot better about taking the time to put the site together and maintaining it while we travel.  We'll try to keep the posts interesting to make your visits worthwhile.  We'll also try to continue posting regularly to give you a reason to keep coming back often.  As always, please feel free to comment, respond, or email us anytime. 

 

Cheers,

Ozell