Sunday April 3, 2005

All Hail The Kiko Mutant

I used to have a counter at the bottom of this website that would tell me how many visitors or “hits” it had. I soon realized that many of the visits counted were actually me checking my hit counter. It took me a while to realize why it went up one every time I checked. It also counted every time that someone went from this page to an archived page or Nora’s blog and then back again. I could get six or seven hits from one visit. I finally found a statistic service that allows me to install a cookie on my machines that blocks them from the counter (so I no longer have to subtract the times that I visit from the total), and that tracks users throughout my site, so I don’t get double hits.
It also gives me access to much more information about Ruby’s visitors! I can tell from which country, state/province, and city their ISP originates. I can tell which browser they use (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) I can tell to what resolution their browser is set so that I can best decide how big to make my images and table formats. I can graph out which days and times are the busiest. I can tell which links within the site were followed and which were ignored. It’s kind of overwhelming. I usually just ignore most of the info and check to see how many people looked at a new post. I’m always happy to see Albuquerque, Utah, Portland, Seattle and the various California users; because I know who most of them are.
I thought that the only people who would visit this page were friends of Ruby and her family, but interestingly enough, there are several other people who find their way to Ruby’s pages. I can tell which page linked them here. Many people from all over the world arrive via Justin’s blog; I get some hits from Japan, but also from Canada (Hello Mr. Von Mustard), Mongolia and Germany. There also are quite a few people who google, msnsearch, or yahoo themselves here. I am privy to their search queries, and some of them are amusing. For many of these googlings, these people had to wander through several pages of possibilities to arrive at Rubydawn.com, and for the most part, I'm glad they did. I do wonder about people who search for "naked baby drool", and it is because of them that I blacked out the address on Ruby's ID. Everyone else is welcome to Yahoo! their way to this space.

My favorite recent searches:

Arab ruby in the beach
How to wait tables
Bacterium found in the ear of a dog
Ruby tuesday baby born

And of course, there is:
Kiko Mutant

I wish that I could send that person an email to thank them for googling Kiko Mutant.
Kiko Mutants transform otherwise average days into great days with their laser emitting eyes.