Saturday, August 05, 2006

The Buzz

So I hardly ever look at my site statistics. Mostly ‘cuz I can never remember my log-in and password but also cuz I don’t know what the figures mean anyway. Let’s just say I average X hits a week which is a whole lot more than the sad amount of comments would indicate. (My blog readers are shy, I think.)

But a week or two ago, I realized Mozilla had been kind enough to remember how to get me into Sitemeter, so I checked things out. One of the handy little items it shows you is the entry point. In other words, you’re surfing around, you see my blog mentioned somewhere in the blogosphere, and you click on it. Well, turns out, I was getting visitors from something called www.bloggingnational.blogspot.com.

Who knew?

So I trotted over there and found myself on a list of authors who might be checking in from the RWA National Conference in Atlanta. The fine folks who put the site together invited us to drop a confirmation in the comment section to get on the official list. Which I did.

Yada, yada, yada.

I checked my statistics yesterday and whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa. They were through the roof!! About five times the normal traffic and a HUGE spike on Monday.

Okay, I thought. What the hell happened on Monday?

Scrolled down. Eureka.

Must’ve been the Nora post. The blog administrator (bless her heart, I don’t even know who she is, but she put an awesome site together!) had added the note: NORA SMOKES??

Guess that piqued the interest of a few people.

Which brings me to a certain queasy feeling when I saw it. Have I outed Nora? Will legions of disapproving fans start boycotting her books? Eek! Have I singlehandedly ruined her career?

Kidding.

2 comments:

Jude said...

Hi Randy:

The huge Monday spike in your stats was because Monday was the biggest day for the Blogging National blog, so any updates posted that day were seen by almost 800 visitors.

Apparently lots of people know Nora smokes, so no worries. I was just being funny. Or trying to be. :)

Hasta Dallas!
jude

Pamela Tyner said...

That’s a unique way to get more visitors to your site :)

I can verify that Nora does indeed smoke, because I smoked with her too. Well, actually it was more like I just stood there and looked at her in awe. But I’m sure she’s used to that.

By the way, I really doubt her readers care that she smokes.