This is not a carpet warehouse

...and other observations

Thanks to Google Analytic, I can see what search terms have brought people to this blog, but occasionally these terms do surprise.

One of the very popular terms that I could never understand is end of the roll pickering. Upon inspection it turns out that this is for the Pickering branch of End of the Roll, a discount carpet and flooring chain in Canada. So if you've come across this blog whilst searching for them, I'm sorry but this is a wrong URL.

Another search that seems to be at least semi-commercial is for dog proof letter boxes. All I can say on this is that there are some ways to do this, both by designing the wall in the first place or by putting some kind of cage inside, but I don't know of any. And the real problem is for people putting stuff into the boxes, not for those receiving. Maybe it's time to campaign for this one again?

There are some other surprises on the list, but it's difficult to fine tune it to get a popularity listing because some very similar search terms rak separately on the charts. So ben duncan big brother, "ben duncan" big brother and big brother ben duncan all rank separately, alongside several other combinations seeking much the same information. However it is possible to spot at a glance when one particular search term is especially popular with ashes to ashes topping the table by some distance, whilst variants such as end of ashes to ashes or ashes to ashes dixon of dock green also making appearances.

Of course both of those searches were influenced by television and over time the number of people making them will inevitably decline. I wonder what the next big search will be for...

A look at my readers

Time for a quick look at who's reading this blog to say thank you to you all.

Last year Tracksy gave up the ghost so I'm now using Google Analytics to keep up with who's reading this blog and what the most popular posts are. Currently I only have data for the period since mid last November, but a few trends are emerging.

First the three most popular days on this blog have been:

1. May 30th
2. May 22nd
3. February 19th

Unsurprisingly the three most popular posts correspond to these days:

1. The end of Ashes to Ashes
2. Do we need Conservative Future?
3. The battle for the Speaker's constituency

And the top search term that brought people here is ashes to ashes.

My readers are spread around the world but with a distinct bias to the Anglosphere. The top ten countries for readers are:

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. Ireland
6. Germany
7. France
8. India
9. Belgium
10. New Zealand

On the more technical side visitors use the following browsers:

1. Firefox 38.43%
2. Internet Explorer 38.39%
3. Chrome 9.67%
4. Safari 9.16%
5. Mozilla 1.08%

...with a load of others each using less than 1%. Surprisingly one visitor is still using Netscape.

A big thank you to everyone who has been visiting and reading the blog, no matter where you're from or how you're reading this.