International

Posted on June 15, 2005

It's always an interesting battle to try and keep under my bandwidth allotment each month. Every couple of days I take a look at my stats and try to estimate whether I'm going to make it or not. Most times, it's obvious I'm going to run over, so I have to make little adjustments... chopping up large categories... removing redundant archive pages... that kind of thing. From previous history, I know that 42% of my bandwidth is used in the first-half of the month. Right now I'm at 51%, so I'm already in trouble. After tweaking a few things to limit the data be transmitted, I was bored and decided to look at all the other stats my hosting company offers.

There's a lot of cool stuff there, but the most surprising was the "Top Countries by Access" list. After eliminating "unknowns" and the USA, here's a list of the top-twenty countries of international visitors to Blogography (in order of volume, and I've bolded the countries I've been to)...

1. Portugal (18%)
2. United Kingdom (16%) - visited
3. Canada (13%) - visited
4. Saudi Arabia (9%)
5. Singapore (8%) - visited
6. Australia (6%)
7. Mexico (5%) - visited
8. Finland (4%)
9. South Africa (3%)
10. Germany (3%) - visited
11. Austria (2%) - visited
12. France (2%) - visited
13. Netherlands (2%) - visited
14. Hong Kong (1%) - visited
15. Denmark (1%) - visited
New Zealand (1%)
16. Indonesia (1%) - visited
17. Japan (1%) - visited
18. Sweden (<1%) - visited
19. Italy (<1%) - visited

I'm trying to make sense of this list. Naturally, I expected predominantly native English-speaking countries to come out on top, but that's not the case. I have never blogged about Portugal. I have never been to Portugal (yet very much wish to visit one day... there is a Hard Rock Cafe in Lisbon, after all). But people in Portugal lead the pack by a comfortable margin (boa vinda!). Maybe my blog is more entertaining when translated into Portuguese?

Saudi Arabia at #4 is a bit puzzling, though I suppose the US military build-up there might explain it.

Another surprise... I (incorrectly) assumed that places I've been to and blogged about would rank higher on the list. With this in mind, I'd have thought that Japan and Germany would rate much higher. Sweden was actually under 1%, despite the fact that I blogged from there every day for four days (omöjlig! where for art thine countrymen Patrick?!?). Italy barely made a half-percent (nessun amore per Dave?).

The biggest shocker of all? I thought for certain that the USA would account for 80-90% of my traffic. It probably doesn't. Once "unknowns" are eliminated, it accounts for just 62%. That's kind of remarkable when you think about it. I wonder if blogs outside the USA have such large foreign readership? I'm guessing that English-language blogs have a considerable edge in attracting a "world view," but can't be sure now.

I hope I manage to get more sleep tonight than the three hours I got last night. Dwight Yoakam is whining his way through an incredibly bad country song (that has stolen riffs from Chuck Berry's Johnny B Good!) on Leno. I can't take it anymore, so I'm going to bed whether I can sleep or not. People actually pay money to buy this guy's "music?" Yeeargh.

Comments

The country with the highest percentage of requests on my page was and remains Mexico. A bit odd, I thought, and sure enough... it's just a spammer of some sort. That might explain the high ranks you see for unexpected countries as well.

Traffic from the US seems to be pretty hard to figure out as all the .com .net .whatever TLDs can be many things. Our site has other (i.e. .com, .net etc), .mx, .de, .uk, .au, .nl, .ca, .no as the top accessing countries, with an approximate ratio of 130:25:15:5:4:3:3:3 for the number of requests and 170:2:35:7:6:5:4:1 for the bandwidth used.

Figuring out what this actually means may be a bit tricky, boring or interesting, depending on your point of view.

Why do you think it's remarkable to have readers from outside the U.S. btw? [My two points here would be that (a) you don't write about a lot of local stuff and, more globally, (b) if people are being fed U.S. media all the time anyway, why would you expect them to read other stuff on the internet...]

Posted by ssp on June 15, 2005 | Reply

   

Most of my readers are from the great US of A. Although, I have a small following from Poland (8.3%). Why the polish like me I dont know. Maybe it's because I'm so darn sexy.

Posted by Rob on June 15, 2005 | Reply

   

the word "blogography" means something VERY naughty in Portugese.....that's probably why.

I get alot of Australians, which is surprising.

Posted by karla on June 15, 2005 | Reply

   

I think my site falls pretty well in with your expectations, Dave. 87.1% United States, 2.4% Canada, 1.3% U.K. All other countries are under 1% each.

Posted by Kevin on June 15, 2005 | Reply

   

Canada in the house! I'm surprised with Portugal being the leader, though. I did however access the blog from Porto, Portugal from June 3 - 6 when I was there for a funeral.

Posted by Fender on June 15, 2005 | Reply

   

You've been to Indonesia? Cool! Which part(s) of Indonesia did you visit?

Posted by Firda on June 16, 2005 | Reply

   

This stuff is pretty cool! Thanks for opening my eyes to statistics!

Posted by Michelle on June 16, 2005 | Reply

   

I found your site on google while searching for an image of a sad person, the one you use the most came up in the search LOL. You looked so sad so I had to check this site out, I've been reading your blogs and laughing so hard. Keep up the humor, you'll be getting daily visits from Iceland now.

Posted by VenusupNorth on June 20, 2005 | Reply

   

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