Fun with Google Analytics

I thoroughly enjoy Google and almost everything they come out with. I especially enjoy Google Analytics. I'll admit that when I first added it, I would look at the data everyday. I did this for about 3 weeks until it became boring for me, because it was the same thing everyday. The number of visitors would shoot up to around 30 each time we posted, and then slowly trickle down to somewhere less than 10 visits a day, and then do the same thing once we created another post. Now I look at it about once a month and I thought I would share some interesting facts as well as play the guessing game.

Traffic Source

I'll start with the most interesting thing in Google Analytics, the traffic source of visitors, specifically the search related traffic. It records all of the Google searches that brought people to our website and here are the highlights

"Brian and Jackie Emmett" (this is the number one search, no big surprise)

"Samurai Babe" - 2 searches (At first I was confused as to why people looking for 'samurai babes' would be led to our sight, but then I remembered Jackie's Halloween outfit. Interesting side note, the 2 visitors spent an average of almost 2 minutes on the site. Must have liked what they saw!)

"Samurai Babe Archive" - 1 search (This guy didn't last long on the site, maybe because there was only one samurai babe)

"Where did Sarah Coburn Go to College?" - 1 search (Sorry to disappoint this visitor because I have no idea).

Our biggest source of traffic from other blogs was emmettville.blogspot.com (again, no surprise) but the next biggest one was a tie between ashleyrutledge.blogspot.com (girl cousin my age on my Mom's side) and marquismafia.blogspot.com (girl cousin my age on my Dad's side, interesting, huh?). Biggest non-family referral comes from marcandjasmyn.blogspot.com (Jackie's friend and old roommate)

Location of Visitors

Question: Since the top three 3 states should be pretty obvious, can you guess the top 5? (answers at bottom). Clue - we had visitors from 24 different states, so it has to be one of those. Ok, so that's not really a clue if you don't know the 24 states but it was a way to squeeze in more useless information to you.

Question: This past month we had visitors from 8 different countries, can you guess the top three?

This actually got me thinking. Since I am in a "random" state (at least compared to my family), I've noticed that it would be fairly obvious to someone that expects me to read their blog to know if I'm not reading it. For example, if my sister or a cousin checked Google analytics and saw they only had one or even 0 visits from Florida over the past month, they would know I’m not checking the blog. So naturally, I thought of Jake and Lesa Emmett in Illinois. They're the only people I know there but I see that we had two visits from Illinois this past month, so it looks like they're keeping up on us. Thanks guys! (Unless of course Illinois is home to the "samurai babe" fetish).

State Answers:

1. Utah - 124 visits

2. California - 77 visits

3. Oregon - 22 visits

4. New York - 15 visits

5. Florida - 9 visits (hey, it's a sign we're making friends, right!?).

Since my Mom has left California and Dad will do so this weekend, I suspect to see Utah gain a stronger hold on its first place grip while California's numbers will decrease. Although, I recently found out that Shauna Rasmussen "creeches" (that's how she said it!) on our blog so I know the California visits won't completely stop.

Country Answers:

1. United States (duh)

2. Portugal - 5 visits

3. India - 2 visits (your explanation is as good as mine)

Brazil only had one visit so it's clear that Jackie is doing a better job at staying in touch with her friends from her mission than I am with mine. We also had one visit from Germany, Italy, the UK, and Australia.