Holy Crap, You're Out There!

I recently signed up with Google Analytics, just to track how many readers I actually have out there, where you all live (not on a personal level - it just shows how many people in each geographic location), etc. And after a few days of tracking (started on 4/17/08), I have to say...wow! There are more of you than I thought!!!

A few stats that blew my mind:

• I have readers not only in California (where most of my friends/family are), but in New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and something that says "not set." And that's just the Top-10! All y'all out there from from 35 of these United States! Pretty cool!
• There are 295 "absolute unique visitors," which I think means at least 295 people have come to the site. What?! Who are you people???
• Most people spend an average of 21 seconds on the website, which makes sense, as my posts are generally short.
• Apparently people who read this blog speak not only English, but Spanish, Russian, Japanese, German and Norwegian! Go you!
  
• My reports say that 88% of the visitors are new (as opposed to returning), but I think that's mostly because I've only been tracking for a few days. I'm thinking this number will even out more over time, but we'll see.
• I hit a peak of 100 page views on Sunday, April 20 (people out there getting stoned and coming to KimsKitchenSink?), but Saturday, April 19 held a close second at 99 views (Happy Passover?) - it's a little confusing, because another section of the site reports 121 views on 4/20, but I think that's total views vs. unique views (repeat visitors in a single day vs. separate individuals visiting only once).
• Most people view 1 page (I'm guessing the homepage, or maybe the page of the newest post), and a decent number (10%) visit 2 pages - which means people are actually clicking around to previous posts and such. Neat!

So yeah. Wow. I'm glad all y'all out there are are reading! It's definitely more than the 8 or so friends and family members I had thought!

I am kind of in shock.

(click to enlarge image)

where my readers are, globally
(the darker the green, the more readers in that region)

PS: Most of my readers (80%!) come, apparently, from referrals - which means I owe a big thanks to you lovely bloggers out there who link to me either in the sidebar or in actual posts to your blog! Thanks!!!

[note: If you want to find out all sorts of interesting things about your own blog/website, it's super easy to do through Google Analytics. Just use your gmail/blogger account and sign up. If you don't have a gmail account...well...get one. What's taken you so long? As you know, I'm terrible with the technologies, and it only took me about 5 minutes to set up. You enter the name of your blog, they give you a piece of html code, which you just copy-paste onto your blog/website. Easy peasy.]