Numerical Uncertainty

Or how you never know what is really going on around the Web.

For my personal amusement, I have had Google Analytics running on this blog site for some time now with only a brief lapse of a couple of days when I changed over to the newer template. Thanks to things like NoScript and other blockers of content, I can never be sure how accurate the visitor stats are, but it does give me a rough idea of who, what, and where.

Being a tiny fish in a vast blogosphere, From the Sidelines’ stats are nothing to brag about. Still, it is interesting to me what gets looked at since I do not flog the blog in dreams of gaining wealth and fame. This blog has been up for over five years now, something that surprised me when I went back through my posts a little while back.

One thing that fascinates me is how Google Analytics and Blogger’s stats do not quite line up. Let us take a look at the top posts past month, October 16 to November 15, for comparison. Blogger is first, then Google Analytics:

Bleach Season 1: The Substitute, Episodes 1-2
Jul 26, 2011   
149 106 Pageviews

CITIZEN KANE (1941)
Jun 22, 2011   
132 102 Pageviews

Howl’s Moving Castle
Nov 25, 2009
106 80 Pageviews

Gojira (Godzilla 1954)
Nov 25, 2009
80 26 Pageviews

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS (2003)
Dec 18, 2009, 2 comments
61 30 Pageviews

Battle of Britain (1969)
Jul 22, 2011
56 85 Pageviews

Bleach Season 1: The Substitute, Ep. 2-3
Jul 28, 2011
43 44 Pageviews

Smallville: Absolute Justice Review Part 1
Sep 13, 2010
40 39 Pageviews

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidora (2001)
Dec 9, 2009
39 36 Pageviews

Only Yesterday (1991)
Dec 3, 2009, 2 comments
34 29 Pageviews

So there are some very large discrepancies between the statistics gathered. One pattern I think I am detecting is the blocking of Google scripts by people concerned about their privacy. All of this makes me wonder how in the world the advertising rates can be calculated for websites.

Note: Blogger doesn’t list the home page for some reason. Google Analytics does and says it was visited 87 times for third place by its stats. It also has a whopping average time of 5:18 spent on it. Yes, that is five minutes and eighteen seconds. In 2009, the average time spent on a web page was 56 seconds. Something is very screwy with that number, methinks!

Now for some fun if probably inaccurate stats for the past year (12 months) from Google Analytics:

2,304 Visits

1,816 Absolute Unique Visitors

3,927 Pageviews

1.70 Pages/Visit

67.45% Bounce Rate

00:01:05 Avg. Time on Site

77.82% % New Visits

Browsers used to visit:

1. Firefox 1,120 48.61%

2. Chrome 511 22.18%

3. Internet Explorer 389 16.88%

4. Safari 205 8.90%

5. Opera 41 1.78%

6. Android Browser 11 0.48%

7. Mozilla Compatible Agent 11 0.48%

8. Playstation 3 5 0.22%

9. IE with Chrome Frame 3 0.13%

10. Opera Mini 3 0.13%

Firefox is still on top after all these years, but Chrome is gaining. Internet Explorer is fading fast.

Visitors came from 78 countries and territories:

I looked at that and I suspect that is a fair representation of Internet penetration across the globe.

What does it all mean? Well, not a lot but one thing that I have confirmed is that pop culture dominates the Net. Also, most of my hits come from people doing image searches, something I rarely do these days. That intrigues me.

I am pleased to report that the Citizen Kane review is one of the most hit pages on the blog. Battle of Britain is slowly climbing up and thanks to the Philippine aviation buffs at timawa.net Thirteen Days got a lot of attention. Bleach becoming hit so often is quite a surprise, since I would have thought reviews of it are done to death and images from it are abundant on the Net.

The biggest surprise is how popular the Smallville: Absolute Justice review has been. There are a lot more Justice Society of America fans out there than I ever suspected. It is nice to see those 1940’s comic book characters still getting some love seventy years after being created.