Hit Count Envy

As I write this, the hit count here on The Third Path stands at 4,519, which isn't bad by most measures, but Thursday evening I installed a hit counter on my old web site, LincMad's Telephone Area Codes & Splits. In less than 2½ days, the area code web site has overtaken the hit counter that has been running here for over 9 months. That's not all that surprising, though, since the area code web site has been around for several years, and got well over a million hits before its previous hit counter broke with the demise of Netscape's Web Garage service. I occasionally peek in on the hit statistics as they roll in, although I have to look quickly — the free version of SiteMeter only gives me information on the last 100 visitors, which, during peak hours, is less than half an hour on the old web site. I've already seen hits from 49 states (apparently no one in Wyoming uses a telephone), six Canadian provinces, and every continent except Antarctica. I've gotten hits from commies and capitalists from Benin (formerly Dahomey) to Viet Nam, and the list just keeps growing. I'm sure one of these days I'll see that .aq in there, and maybe even .wy.us...

Here on The Third Path, my visitors are a remarkably international mix, as well. Some of the international hits are random results of Blogger's "Next Blog" feature, but I have real readers from places like Utrecht, Dubai, and Auckland, in addition to a nationwide assortment here in the U.S.A. I'm happy to say that adding links from the area code site to the blog is paying off, accounting for more than 20% of my traffic. Technorati is also starting to drive some readers here. There still seem to be a disturbing number of people looking for "pity corn," although the closest thing to it in this blog is my analysis of an appellate court decision involving "the strip-search of a ten-year-old girl." Don't worry, though: I'm not going to stop blogging until I run out of things to say, and that's not likely any time soon.

During the time it took me to write this blog entry, 80 people visited the area code site, and three people visited the blog. Patience, Grasshopper, patience.

Technorati tags: Technorati, Area Codes, Hit Counter, Site Meter