Some time ago I received some feedback via e-mail and IM from several readers from elsua indicating how they were not very enthusiastic with the actual pop-up that was coming up every time they would visit my weblog directly without going through the RSS feed. Back then I explained that the reason why that pop-up was coming up was because I was making use of a hit counter widget that was offering its services for free but with the slightly annoyance of the pop-up itself. So at that time I decided to start my quest to find a good hit counter, available for free, and which I could use here in this weblog. And after having searched extensively for it I have finally found it. I have been trying it out for the last couple of weeks and it seems to be working really well and it is actually providing some really good and relevant information about the readers of this weblog, so I thought I would share this weblog post to let you know about it, in case you may want to have a look and use it yourselves.
It is called GoStats and, like I mentioned above, it is available free of charge so you can sign up for an account and add your weblog, update your weblog template with the widget and you would be ready to go ! As simple as that. You would then be able to get and display daily hits along with the referrers, which is always a good thing so that you can see who else is talking about you, and a whole bunch of other stuff, that instead of me boring you all with the description I better point you right to those stats so that you can check them out for yourself and see what elsua has been up to.
Now, let’s move on to the next widget that I have found earlier on this morning, thanks to the hat tip from one of my friends from the other side of the pond, and which I have been enjoying a great deal thus far, since I have added in all three weblogs that I currently maintain. The actual widget is an offering coming from Digital Point Solutions and it is called Geo Visitors. This is actually a web site that you would allow you to track your web site’s or weblog’s visitors and place them in a worldwide map using Google Maps so that you can see right away where they are located in the world. Right, how cool is that, eh?
I am not sure about your folks but I have always been very curious to find out where you all are, specially the faithful readers that keep coming back repeatedly to get your daily elsua dose, so when I saw Geo Visitors I just couldn’t help but put it together into this weblog and start watching where you are all coming from. Fascinating ! I know it is a bit too early but if you would click on the little widget I added for this new hack you can already see some interesting data. First, for instance, that my main readership seems to be folks from the English-speaking world, which I guess it was to be expected since this weblog is written in English (Although I am thinking about making some changes in this particular area, but more on that at a later time), then I have got a number of regular readers who come from very exotic destinations like Venezuela, Finland or India (I wonder who that would be) and growing…
Thus now you will be able to see how I am going to be spending a little bit of my time from now on. Just finding out some more about you folks. And the great thing about Geo Visitors is the fact that when you actually click on the Site Visitor button from someone who may have been to your site you have got the possibility of using Google Earth (If you are into Geography you gotta love this programme, I tell you!) and follow up to right to the very same city where that hit is coming from. Awesome ! I love it!
So there you go. Two weblogging tips for you before the beginning of the weekend so that you can go and explore them as you may see fit over the next couple of days and see if you would put them together into your weblog template. Now I will just go on with that everlasting task of finding a new theme to use with elsua. Sigh. Oh, I tell you what, if you know of a WordPress theme that you feel would fit in quite nicely with the topics I get to talk about over here feel free to drop a comment over here or contact me offline and I will look into it. There has got to be something out there that I could use and feel comfortable with, right? So let the hunt continue …
Tags: GoStats, Geo Visitors, Digital Point Solutions, Google Maps, Google Earth, Blogging Tips, Hit Counters, Blogging Measurements, Metablogging
