The Numbers Game

Pos, at Niagaran Pebbles, did a post today bemoaning the fact that he has equaled his entire 2007 post output only to find that I was four posts ahead. Make it five. (In quantity, I’m a bit ahead of last year’s output.)

That surprised me when I read it, as I had the feeling that the Blog has been slowing down: me, readers, comments and quality.

In order of slowing categories:


I find myself thinking about posting, or thinking about a particular subject for a post, and, that’s about it. Too much thought or research, not enough meat in the idea, no way to make it humorous, resulting in a lot of throw away stuff.

Readers, as measured by Sitemeter, are down 20% last month, though over a year’s time they are constant at a thousand a month. Big Rick says I have 20 readers that check in on a more than regular basis, having little else to do. (He admits he falls within the category.) Comments seem to be light. Summer vacation? Get with it please, I’m about 200 hits away from 20,000. That means that the twenty of you have really been wasting a lot of time since September 2006.

Then there’s the fear. Is quality down? I was talking to someone that reads the blog on an irregular schedule. “You tell great stories,” she said, “unless you do the political stuff.” Truth told, the quality is down. I dash off posts. Quality requires more time for gestation and patience to polish, two things that I don’t have much experience with.

So, for another metric, I just went to wholinkstome.com. It tells you if someone has linked to your blog, obviously. The more links from people who get linked to, the cooler you are. It also gives you your Google PageRank and Technorati and Alexa ratings. Whenever I check, Google ranges between not rated and a five. Alexa has me dropping about 400,000 in the last three months; but, over those three months, I’ve averaged its 1,644,757th most popular blog. Technorati is on a downward slide, currently at an eleven. Congratulations to Jeni at Downriver Drivel: she’s perking along at a 540 on Technorati. Some of my other readers and commenters: Hedy 23, Thomas 36, Milena 24, Ron 45, Kvatch and Co. 95, Sonja 21, Jim 32, Curmudgeon 55.

So, here’s some stuff for the bots: sex, nude, nudism, nudity, au natural, starkers, Federal Judge Song (I’m the number one source for it on Google, ahead of the site I linked to in 2006 – figure that out), Obama, McCain, Olympics, Downriver Drivel. That last ought to do it.

Not yet time to quit the day job.