Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Stupid Stats

Just after midnight last night I happened to be checking out my Sitemeter stats when I noticed the graphic below:


It appears that the crew over at Sitemeter are more on the ball than I've been giving them credit for. I mean, "visits" broken down into 1/10th units? Wow. Since I'm not even sure what 1/10th of a visit might actually be, I can only speculate about what this graph might possibly mean...

Maybe 1/10th of a visit is like, I don't know, somebody saw a link to this blog at another site.

2/10ths of a visit could be when somebody sees a link to this blog and briefly considers clicking it.

Maybe at 3/10ths somebody actually mouses over the link but then changes his/her mind.

Perhaps 4/10ths of a visit is when the person intends to click a link to this blog, but they miss and accidentally go to a third site (which turns out to be interesting, so the person forgets about coming here).

5/10ths, half a visit. Things are almost happening now! Possibly half a visit occurs when somebody incorrectly types the URL while attempting to come to this blog.

At 6/10ths of a visit a person is over half way here. He/she's clicked the link or correctly typed the URL, but Blogger is momentarily down! The person gets tired of waiting for the page to load and ends up visiting some other site. Damn!

Maybe 7/10ths of a visit happens when, just as a person has done everything necessary to visit this blog, just when the connection between his/her computer and this blog is taking place, a power failure strikes! What crappy luck!

Now I wonder what would constitute 8/10ths of a visit? Of course! As this blog is about to load on the viewer's computer, evil hackers hijack the computer and begin sending out billions of spam messages for Viagara and whatnot. Don't forget to update your firewall and anti-virus software! There are a lot of bad people out there who have made it their mission to prevent you from visiting this blog!

Now that we're at 9/10ths of a visit, perhaps we should pause and reflect for a moment. For this is surely the saddest category of partial visits to a website. You've probably already guessed that 9/10ths of a visit to a website can mean only one thing. Yes, that's right. At 9/10ths of a visit to a website there are no problems with missed clicks, mis-typed URLs, internet or power outages, or evil hackers. At 9/10ths of a visit everything that needs to happen has happened perfectly, but just as the page is loading the user dies. It could be from a sudden heart attack. It could be that criminals have entered the house and shot him/her just as he would have viewed my blog. Whatever the case, the person is dead, and he/she has died without viewing my blog.

10/10ths of a visit: Welcome!

4 comments:

  1. I love it. I wish every organisation presented their data to me in such a "You're great! You're the top of the pops!" manner... eg my bank statement could be accompanied by a chart titled "OK, so you're single; but compare your outgoings with how much this MARRIED bloke had to pay last month on childcare, extortionate soft furnishings, skincare products with dubious efficacy and cheap plastic toys which'll be thrown away within 3 weeks!"

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  2. Hi Glenn, this is the 3.1415926535897932384626433...-th time I visit your blog this month.

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  3. Oops! I meant, Rick! (You guys are my fav bloggers, you know)

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  4. Tafkass,
    I think you've pretty much nailed what that kind of graphic is about.

    Psephis,
    People confuse Glenn and I all the time. I'm a bit taller, but I think he's ever so slightly better looking. Though I've had more girlfriends than he has... [mad cackling ensues!]

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