Who can it be now?

Sing along with me, folks! "Who can it be knocking at my door? Go away! Don't come 'round here no more. Can't you see that its late at night? I'm very tired and I am not feeling right."

So, I am paranoid. We all know this. Also, I am pretty nosy. Nothing new there. And I am married to a computer geek. Scene is set, let's see what happens:

Around Christmas, I was staring at my blog (as I frequently do when avoiding laundry, dishes or small children) and I wondered who actually looks at it. Sure, I know some of my good buddies read it but...who else? (And I forgot to mention before that I am also pretty vain and believe everyone should think I'm wonderful...'cuz I am!) When the Man was trying to go to sleep that night, I kept talking, mentioning random things that happened during the day; typical stuff like who pushed who and the daily poop tally. The usual for an SAHM. I also wondered out loud about my blog readers. Possibly in an effort to shut me up about it, the Man promises to load something on my blog that will track visitors.

Me: You can do that?
Man: (slightly annoyed that I doubt his genius, ignores me a pretends to sleep.)
Me: Can you do it tomorrow?
Man: ZzzzzzZZzzzzz...
Me: Okay, so tomorrow, then.

About three weeks later ('cuz we must include the Man factor, which causes everything to take exponentially longer than first thought), he puts a script on my blog. You can't see it. It's like a ninja script, tracking anyone who comes to my blog, how they got here, watching what they look at, timing how long they're here, and chucking throwing stars at people who leave without commenting. Just kidding...maybe. Better leave a comment to be sure you don't get one in the back.

And the obsession begins! The script is from Google Analytics. I can check daily/hourly/whateverly and see who is looking at my blog. Here are some cool facts:

• Since I started tracking on Jan. 5th, duckduckcow has had 1,671 visitors.
• Average visitor spends 2 minutes on my blog.
• The current favorite page is the archive for my London visits.
• Approximately 58% of visitors come from referring sites. These are basically sites that linked to duckduckcow and people click on the link. This also includes people clicking on my site through comments I've left (got an interesting spike in visits when I commented on a mega blog - that was fun!).
• You can also get to my blog through search engines. Currently "duck poems" is the most popular search keywords...although I am not entirely sure why it comes to me...there's only been one or two poems - neither of them about ducks. Various FHE searches are also big hitters.
• While less than half of the visitors are here for the first time, I have some loyal fans, 12% of which have come here 26-50 times since I started tracking.
• My fans (if I can call them that) hail mostly from Utah and Texas - no surprise - but what is very surprising is the number of visitors coming from Washington. I know one family in Washington. They don't have 56 members, either.
• I've never had a visitor from Maine or North Dakota. If you know anyone in those states, send them the link, okay? It would sure help my visitor map look prettier.

Pretty cool, huh? It's easy to get started, if you are interested in knowing or are just as obsessive as I am! But I warn you...you'll start imaging all kinds of random things about your visitors, like why Washingtonians like poems about ducks.

Also? There's some new cakes on The Cake Cow, if you haven't been there lately. And I got an email from a lady wanting to know what it would cost to ship a teddy bear cake to Arizona...yeah, that was interesting...