Web Stats

Ok, so I know this kind of thing isn’t that interesting to most of you. The one thing I definitely have learnt is that most of my blog readers are here for the agility stuff, so you’ll have to excuse me this one post.

I’ve been using WordPress BlogStats for about a month now, although I’ve had a stat counter tucked away on my site for years. On average, undermybed.co.uk gets around 400-500 hits a month. That’s a decent amount for a small, agility-specific site, and considerably more than I thought. Most people arrive here via links from other sites and blogs in particular, and so to thank my top five referrers, here are some direct links:

bouncingbackbailey.blogspot.com
flyinkai.blogspot.com
giruff.blogspot.com
morgandogs.com
ruffdogs.co.uk

I generally try and make sure you all get lots of hits from here too. There is the Blog Scroller in the menu, and when I mention specific people, dogs, or blog posts I try to link directly to them. On a very simplistic level, Google ranks your site according to how many other sites are linking in to it, so by linking to your site (or you to mine!) I’m hopefully giving your site a bit of a Google boost. Being rated higher in Google obviously means your site is easier to find and attracts more readers, which is always good!

So, why is this stats stuff important? Well, it helps me know my audience and what you like reading. For example, up until now I always presumed that my long, rambling posts were the least popular thing on this blog. I like reading long, rambling posts, but I thought I was in the minority. Apparently not! More people read my long, rambling posts, so you can expect a lot more of them in the future.

Also, I know you all like to visit my blog on Wednesday. My hits always go way up on a Wednesday, so I will try and post more often on Tuesday/Weds to make sure you have something new to read! I presume this means that most of my readers are in college or university since higher education places give their students Wednesday afternoons off, leaving them with more time to range about on the internet.

Anyway, despite that long bit up there about Google and links, I’m currently thinking about my site URL. undermybed.co.uk doesn’t fit what the site is about anymore, which means my content and my URL are completely unrelated – the site is harder to find, basically. In the long term, changing the URL would be better. In the short term, it would mean that a lot of people would be linking to the wrong place, effectively splitting my Google ranking between two sites. Notsogood! This is just an idea at the moment though, I haven’t decided anything for definite. What would really sway me is if I had any good ideas for something to change to — I’d like something that reflects the agility/flyball/dogs, since that’s pretty much the content these days, but not something that is specific to their names. Maybe something related to the site’s current name would also be good, perhaps including “under my” or “under the”, or equally, “over the” or “over my”. I’m really just musing out loud now, so, here’s the plea: suggestions, please!

Finally, best of luck to everyone competing at Crufts this weekend, especially Gina with Cas and Rum, Vicki with Inca, Char with Ricky and Tia, Sarah with Skye, Lady with Itty, and Andrea with the Beardies (I don’t think I’ve missed anyone!)