Those of you with blogs and websites know you can pull up all kinds of interesting factoids about visitors to one’s site. In that vein, here are some interesting things about the site traffic here.

Countries breakdown
Understandably, most of my site’s visitors are from the United States. Care to guess which country is second on the list? If you guessed Canada, you’re wrong. It’s Japan! Not only is Japan second on my list, I get twice as many visitors from Japan as I do from Canada (which is third). I know most of you probably don’t know much about Japan but let me hasten to assure you that I could not be more flattered. Japan is the birthplace of lean manufacturing -and they’re reading me! When I get depressed that nobody likes my boring manufacturing posts, the thought of my Japanese visitors keeps me going. I keep meaning to post some scans of pattern drafts from some Japanese pattern books (I collect those) but I never seem to get around to it. The Japanese do some awesomely cool stuff and I’m immensely flattered they choose to visit my site. However, nobody from Japan writes me :(

I get very few visitors from Spanish speaking countries. A pity, really. I speak Spanish with native fluency and have worked in plants through out the Americas so I’m gravely disappointed with the sparse visitation from the region.

I got blogged by two other sites and the comparison is interesting. The first site was Treehugger -one of my most favorite, favorite sites- who discovered Tivi here and blogged them. Treehugger was delighted with the hydrogen and biodiesel hummer limousine that I found in Taos. The long and short of their posting was that I was fluff or filler which only makes the comparison of Treehugger’s visitors all the more telling when compared to visitors from Marginal Revolution which blogged me on Monday. The blog posting on Marginal Revolution -a libertarian site- blogged a topic I hold dearest -that of sizing and fit -as opposed to Treehugger’s fluff but I got nearly twice as many visitors from Treehugger as I did from MR. More telling, Treehugger’s visitors read three times as many pages while MR’s visitors barely read one. MR’s comments in response to the posting there were considerable -but most commenters didn’t even bother to read the original posting to which they were espousing opinions (!) while Treehugger’s had no comments posted at all. Result: The left-wing liberals from Treehugger were more interested in following unusual in-depth topics and I even sold 4 books. The more right-leaning visitors from MR had a lot to say on their site but didn’t bother to traipse over here and I sold -maybe- one book. Hmmmmm. I hope my libertarian friends appreciate the restraint I’m showing in failing to get in a little dig or two over that one ;). MR is a worthwhile site all the same so don’t judge it by this; sizing and fitting isn’t the most interesting topic in a broad audience although everyone seems to have an opinion on the matter.

Still, the traffic generated by MR and Treehugger didn’t even begin to approach the traffic generated by pissed-off home sewers from PatternReview! I post on PatternReview from time to time and in spite of my best efforts, I manage to commit sacrilege against one or another of their high priestesses -as though I’d know who they were- who could keep up with them? They’re spawning new experts everyday over there; their latest one is offering a class in making a spiffy toilet paper roll cover -I kid you not. The traffic from the Threads bulletin board is scanty. I guess others have become as bored with Threads magazine as I have. I note they’re publishing an article on welt pockets…I’ll be watching for that to gauge content -and if it’s anything like mine- the source material for appropriate attribution. Threads has had a problem with that for years. You’d think that a magazine purporting to uphold design integrity -eschewing knock-offs- would mirror those beliefs when it comes to editorial policy but they don’t seem to demonstrate the same respect for intellectual integrity.