Stats

I’ve just realized October has been my awesomest month by 25% so far on this blog.

WordPress Stats in the week of September 26th, 2010

I was just browsing WordPress.com global stats and found this rather interesting graph showing the number of posts per week:

It basically shows that there were around seven million more posts than usual in a week. This definitely seemed unusual. When I looked back on that week on Wikipedia I couldn’t find any major news events that would have created such a big surge in posts. It simply didn’t make sense. So then I did a Google News search for ‘wordpress’ of the week of September 26th 2010, and it turns out that during that week Microsoft killed its Live Spaces blogging platform, and forced all its users to go to WordPress.com instead. That explains the sudden surge in posts.

WordPress stats

A lot of viewers of my blog will probably not realize how much information it collects about them. Everyday I am able to find out what searches got people to my blog, which websites people got to it from (generally Google+, some spam one and YouTube) and which websites they go onto afterwards. I can also see daily views and other fascinating breakdowns – it can be especially useful to see which posts are successful (as a result of this there is definitely going to be another Cleverbot talking to Cleverbot, or maybe another bot, post), but from all the statistics the search terms are the most hilarious. Here are my favorites:

• Push Amy but only when she tells you to
• Apple store down
• ajcuivd289
• Jedi Jim Apprentive
• Put Hitler in the Cupboard
• Chuck Norris

Or at least those are my favorites from the rather dull list of a few hundred…

Browser Success

The above graph from Wikipedia shows the top six methods for browsing the internet: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Mobile Web. Roughly looking at these graphs we can see that there is a steady pattern: Internet Explorer is losing users, Firefox and Opera are staying steady, and Safari, Chrome and Mobile Web are gaining users, Chrome is gaining rapidly. By mid-2011 I see it as fairly likely that Internet Explorer usage will have probably dropped below 40%, and by mid-2012 Google Chrome will have over-taken both Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you’d asked me six months ago I would probably have said that by the end of 2011 IE will still be the most used, but Chrome will have more users than Firefox.

It is hardly a surprise that Internet Explorer is rapidly losing users, it is struggling to stay ahead and despite that desperate TV marketing campaigns, it is clear that Internet Explorer is on the demise, with Google sticking a Chrome ad on pretty much every Google owned site, including Google ads. Firefox is also now the most used browser in Europe, but I think one day Firefox will also die a death.

As for Safari getting more users, that can only be down to more Mac sales.