Quips notes 28.10.04

I sometimes find it interesting to see where visitors to my movie reviews website are checking in from. A lot of online counters and trackers seem fairly invasive for my liking - both as a web content reader and provider. So, I like that the amount of info the reinvigorate site (http://das.reinvigorate.net/) offers me is minimal enough that I never know visitor specifics such as names or personal data, even if I was interested in prying into such things. However, they still offer vaguely comprehensive enough data that I do find interesting. The feature that I enjoy the most is probably the Time Zone map.



The screen capture detail that hopefully appears above shows traffic from around the globe to my site, Stephen Bourne's Movie Quips, during July 2004. Use for this info is likely fairly limited, considering the maps really aren't accurate enough to know whether or not all of the visitors noted within, say, 'Zone F' are located in the Ottawa area, or to what degree they're dispersed throughout several countries along that vertical time line. Frankly, I just like that the majority of visitors seem to be located along the expanse that includes my hometown region. Sixty-six percent of the site's total visitors, during that month, according to the basic, colour coded listing that accompanies this map.

However, what's also great to see is that there are people from other regions dropping by the site. From other parts of North America, as well as from the UK, Europe and further East. Before signing up with reinvigorate, I had no idea that people from other provinces or countries were bothering with my movie reviews website at all.



Furthermore, pulling up the same map from August 2004, reinvigorate allows me to discover how the traffic has changed by comparison. Some regions have increased, others have decreased in frequency. I don't know why that is. It's simply interesting to see. Being aware of these statistics doesn't particularly affect what subsequent content I'll use for my reviews site, though. Or, how I'll write each new critique. I really only check out the maps for fun, and am glad that reinvigorate offers this easy to use, free feature.

Thanks for checking in.