How I Missed My Own Blogaversary

The impetus to write this post is the fact that I missed my own blogaversary this year. How could I have done that?  It was easy....I was preoccupied with other things. I hate to admit it, but it happened.  First, we were on a vacation in early July and drove over twenty-five hundred miles.  Yes, we did have a fun time visiting with friends in another state and visiting relatives on the return home. But after we got unpacked, a wave of family birthdays in July (five, including my own) was heading our way, and a variety of other plans were in the making.  By the time July 23rd rolled around, I just plain forgot.  


At the first of the year, I like to write a post that includes statistics about the past year's activity on this blog. Since I also forgot to do that last January, I thought this "missed blogaversary" post would be the perfect place to include a few blog statistics.  Call me crazy, but I absolutely l-o-v-e analyzing statistics, especially when they are for this blog. My first experience with blog statistics began in mid-2008, when I was still learning how to spell "genea-blogger."  First, I installed Site Meter (the free version) primarily out of curiosity to track sources of traffic to Mississippi Memories.  Perhaps it was the fact that I was new to blogging, and I was still uncertain that anyone would really want to read what I wrote about my family's history. But this handy little gadget would enable me to see that real people were actually finding my site. Site Meter turned out to be a fantastic tool, and it not only allowed me to determine the number and geographic locations of visitors to my blog, it provided data that contained "search words" that had directed visitors to Mississippi Memories. 


Later, I installed Google Analytics.  With only a few keystrokes, this tool provided a wide variety of statistics.  Like magic, Google Analytics produced a plethora of neat colored lines and graphs that tabulated information about visitors to my blog.  I could view statistics by the day, week, month and year.  I could see numbers of visitors for specific times of the day, and I could tell what percentage of visitors came from where.  


How had I lived without Google's latest creation, my new blog toy?  


Although Google Analytics may be most useful for gathering data on e-commerce sites, the tool has served me and my blog well.  I can determine what topics were of the most interest to my readers, the peak times that visitors read my blog, and the locations where most of my readers live. Now that Blogger has evolved and has a new and improved format, all sorts of stats about posts, visitors and times are available there on demand.


Maybe like me, you may be wondering just who has been reading this blog, when do they read it, and just exactly what they are reading. Using statistics from the past two calendar years, I know the majority of visitors to my site hail from "East of the Mississippi."  Yes, I do have blog visitors who reside throughout the U.S. (and in several countries) but most of them seem to live primarily along the East Coast and in the South. Another finding is that most readers of Mississippi Memories likely work for a living. And since the statistics show that peak traffic times are 6-9 a.m., around noon, and after 6 p.m., it appears these readers are not using company time to read this blog.  


Topics that have attracted my readers still continue to fascinate me and to prove that posts I sometimes deem blog-worthy often are not that at all.  Sometimes a simple post about a certain surname brings an unexpected surge of visitors to the site.  Good examples of this phenomenon are some of the posts that I have written during the past two years about the Burel/Burrel/Burrell, Netherland, and Conner families.


Although Blog Year #4 is already more than thirty days underway, it seems like only yesterday when this genea-journey began.  I want to take this opportunity to "Thank You, Dear Readers" for visiting Mississippi Memories....I hope you visit again soon.  And I sincerely hope you find a little something here that will help you piece together that family history puzzle. 

Google Analytics for 2010

Last year was a great year for genea-bloggers and for family history research in general.  Right now, it seems that genealogy is a hot topic everywhere you turn.  Not only is it the subject of several television shows, but family research capabilities are constantly being expanded with an increasing number of new and improved online databases and high tech devices that make successful research faster and easier than ever before. Family history research is no longer "just a hobby," it is becoming an industry itself.  And it is this increased interest in searching for one's roots that caused the readership of my blogs to reach an all-time high this past year, with over sixteen thousand visits recorded. According to Google Analytics, about three fourths of those who landed on my blogs were searching the web for specific names and locations for their own ancestors. And it still amazing to me to see where these visitors originate. Although a majority of the visitors to my blogs reside in the continental United States, others live throughout the world, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, Russia, Netherlands, France, Ukraine, and Australia.  I am both humbled and pleased to think that some of these visitors may have found something on one of my blogs that helped them in their own family research.  

The Year 2009, According to Google Analytics

Although this blog is not yet a year old, its first year was a very good one. According to Google Analytics, Mississippi Memories had 6,484 visits from 55 countries/territories, with 4,119 unique visitors. These vistors arrived primarily through the use of various search engines, such as Google, and accounted for 46.08% of all traffic to the blog. Referrals from other sites accounted for 41.54% of total traffic, while 11.75% of all visits resulted from direct traffic to the blog. Other types of traffic amounted to a minimal 0.63%.

Surprisingly, four posts generated the most traffic. Subjects of these posts were Robert Johnson's grave, the Bridgewater Inn, a bed and breakfast in Greenwood, Mississippi, the new B. B. King Museum located in Indianola, Mississippi, and a review of a recently published book, One Night of Madness, written by native Mississippian, Stokes McMillan.

The past year was a terrific year for communications from readers, and during 2009, I received many emails from throughout the country. Some of these emails were from new cousins who are now proud additions to my family tree, while others originated from readers who are not related. Although they are not related to the writer of this blog, several of these readers were kind enough to share family history information that was included in posts here on Mississippi Memories. Posts entitled The Restoration of a Cemetery: Conner Cemetery and The Hemingway Family Migrates to Madison County, Mississippi resulted from reader contacts and information and facts provided by these dedicated family researchers.

The simple fact is that Mississippi Memories owes its success to you, its readers. And I thank you, one and all!

Blog Traffic and New Cousins

This week has been the week for finding new cousins. Technology continues to make our world a much smaller one, and blogging makes it even smaller.

Many of my recent postings have been about my mother's ancestors, including the surnames of Coggins, Pettus, Trigleth, Killebrew, and Neatherlin/Neatherland/Netherland. One of these posts caught the attention this week of a Killebrew descendant who grew up in South Texas and now lives in South Carolina. Interestingly, our great-great-grandmothers were sisters.

According to statistics provided by Google Analytics for the past year, approximately 75% of my blog readership originates from surname searches made using various search engines. This means that my older posts are still being read. One of these searches brought another cousin to this blog....this time a Branch cousin who already lives in Mississippi.

And just last month, thanks to this blog, a Netherland descendant who lives near San Antonio, Texas, found information here about some of our common ancestors who lived in Mississippi almost a hundred years ago. Her email to me and my subsequent phone call to her enabled both of us to engage in a lively and amazing discussion about our families that would not have happened otherwise.

Thank you, cousins, for reading this blog! I hope you will visit often.

Blogoversary Today

One year ago today, I became a blogger. It all began with Attala County Memories, and one year and several blogs later, here we are. Early this year, I consolidated my cemetery blogs into Cemeteries of Dancing Rabbit Creek and started a second blog, Mississippi Memories. On January 3, 2009, I began using Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) to monitor traffic on my blogs, and I am happy to report that over 7,000 visitors, who reside in the United States and in 16 foreign countries, have visited so far this year.

Thank you, readers, for taking the time to stop by and visit.