Talking about you; Where English words come from; An open window

The number of visitors I get for the ‘new’ (well, it’s not so new, really) blog is higher than the old one (a little). But it’s not that that is the surprise. It’s where the people come from.

Now, every day, I get more people from Italy (some of whom I know in real life and some of whom I know through blogs), some from the States (some of whom I know through blogs) and Canada (no idea).

And then there are those from the UK – but no-where near as many as it used to be. Perhaps our friends have got bored with my writing (although they should really be paying attention right now)? I’ve even lost D as a regular reader. I guess he has a life to lead. Ho hum.

But there is a very annoying thing that has started to happen recently. It has to do with Google Analytics. I have the map of visitors, which shows the IP for every visitor (but, from past experience it doesn’t catch them all) and I have Google Analytics which, certainly in the past, caught almost everyone.

The problem is that, in general, most of the people from the UK no longer show up on Google Analytics, including S who visits most days. I contacted Google to explain and they came back with the trite answer that it takes 24 hours to show up. But, trust me, even after 48 hours S doesn’t show up and that is also true of others.

I have checked my code and Google is on every page, so it’s not that. So why is Google suddenly randomly disregarding visitors like this? And what does it mean for my other sites, some of which receive quite a number of visitors per day? Does it mean that I can add, say, 10% to the figure Google quotes?

I mean, I do understand that none of these counters are perfect but, from Google, I expect something better. And I expected a better response to my query.

On a different note, today, at work, for reasons that I won’t go into now, I used some words/phrases that I don’t normally use any more. One of these was ‘apeshit’.

And, as soon as I said it, I realised I would have to explain it as, even though the guy I said it to has a very good command of English, I was certain that he wouldn’t have heard of this one. But, in explaining what it meant I discovered that I had absolutely no idea of where it came from or how it came to be.

And one of the beauties of being in a foreign country where the mother tongue is not English, is that you need to know more about your own language in order to explain your use of it. So I checked it out and this is what it says from Wiktionary:

From ape + shit, possibly from the tendency of certain primate species to throw faeces when extremely annoyed

So, there you go. How it is that we use it, maybe. And, tomorrow, if the customer reacts as I think and if we were all primates in the jungle, I would expect there to a lot of faeces coming in our direction. Should be interesting, anyway.

And, on a final note. If our bloody MD leaves her window open, leaving the office one more time, I swear I shall chuck her out of it!

13 thoughts on “Talking about you; Where English words come from; An open window

  1. Ciao Andy,
    may I ask you why are you interested in your readers?
    It’s not an ironic question, I am just wondering. As for I am concerned, I don’t even look at the statistics…

  2. Ciao Bianca,
    Of course you may ask. The answer is not so simple. I am interested on several levels and for several reasons. I used to run an computer services company and the stats were always important to work out cost effectiveness of the sites we had. As I still look after some websites, they all have stats available and, every day, as part of the routine, I check the stats and have, in the past been able to advise the customers of trends/unusual activity and, in one case, the results of some publicity. Originally, I looked at my blog stats, partly, to ensure that what I was giving to my customers was, more or less accurate and to test various stats that were available.

    In addition, I had some problems with the old blog on one or two posts. I, therefore, need (well, like, anyway) to see if these problem people come back.

    On a personal level, it makes me feel a little connected to people rather than writing for nothing. OK, so now, more people comment but old habits die hard.

    There, I told you it wasn’t quite so simple :-)

    p.s. also I am slightly nosy ;-)

  3. Since you are talking about statistics and analysing data (which I do very little), just one question: I noticed in my WordPress Analytics that I receive one hit from your blog every single day, since many months. It is constant, regular, to the extent that hits from your blog are third in my referrer page. Which of course I like and of which of course I thank you a lot. But I’m asking myself: is that you who clicks, or someone else, or both things? After all, I’m a bit nosy too!

    :-)
    :-)

  4. Thank you Andy. It’s always fascinating to understand the reasons behind people interests.
    :)
    ps. is my English understandable? I’m far too tired to write in English, sorry about that.

  5. @MoR – yes, this is true. You always get one hit from me, I suspect. Although not every day, the blogs in the Regular section and those in the Italian section I visit most days. They are my usual reads and I enjoy those blogs so much. I hope that there are other readers of mine that choose to click on you too – but I do not know.
    @Bianca. It’s a pleasure. Your English is very understandable and, although I understand your reasons for not writing more in English, I enjoy your English very much and hope to read more of it – but no pressure intended.

  6. There have been a few posts, recently, where I meant to comment but I always need to think it through and then I have work and then the moment passes. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone away. I do feel somewhat guilty when I have something I want to say and then don’t get round to actually adding a comment. I promise to try to do better…. :-)

  7. I also trawl through my stats occasionally. And I actually stopped using Google Analytics because I knew I was getting more visitors than they said I was. I switched over to StatCounter and I find their stats far more reliable.

  8. I should have a look at StatCounter then. I thought Google was OK until recently but now I know, for certain, that some visitors drop off their radar.

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