Montana & Mississippi, where are you?
December 9, 2010, 11 Comments
Recently I added a flag counter. I know it’s a bit geeky but I rather like seeing all the flags from the countries where people have read these pages. If you scroll down a bit and look to the right, you’ll see the top 12 countries, and they are just the tip of the iceberg. One third of readers come from Switzerland, another third from the UK and US combined, and the last third is divided between readers from 87 different countries (see the map above). Newest entrant: Bolivia. I still find it rather exciting to realise that people in Mexico, Malaysia and Monaco could be reading this.
And to get even more nerdy, you can even see which states in the USA are represented. So far the total is 46 out of the 50 states plus DC – where are the folks in Montana and Mississippi? Do they not have internet connections over there? And what’s with Rhode Island, Idaho and North Dakota? Surely their fine citizens want to know all about Switzerland? Of course I’m joking, but it is quite satisfying to see all those state flags lined up, even if I don’t recognise most of them.
My only wish is that I’d installed the flag counter earlier. This blog is one year old today and in that time it’s had over 52,000 visitors: that would be so many more flags. Now you might think that means 1000 per week, but in fact nearly all have them have been in the six months since the book was published. Despite that, the book did actually come first (at least from my pont of view) although one reader thought that the book was a compilation of the blog posts.
If you look at my first post, you can see how much I have learnt about blogging in the last twelve months. Back then I hadn’t discovered pictures or video, and seemingly didn’t have as much to say as now. That all changed in April this year when 6000 visitors dropped in all in one day, the 13th. It felt like the world had invaded my sitting room; in fact it was just Japan, eager to read about Heidi.
So, 117 posts later, here are the top ten most popular ones (excluding the ‘About me’ and ‘About the book’ pages, which have been clicked on more than most posts):
- Was Heidi’s father German?
- Tears of outgoing Bundesrat minister Merz
- A beginnner’s guide to Swissness
- Dead famous in Switzerland
- Summer in the city means swimming in Bern
- 10 trivial facts about Switzerland
- Counting in Switzerland: as easy as 1-2-3?
- Switzerland from A to Z
- Kiss me, I’m Swiss
- Is Switzerland the black sheep of Europe?
That’s it for this first year. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. Happy Birthday blog!
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11 Comments on "Montana & Mississippi, where are you?"
Happy birthday indeed. I have enjoyed everyone of those blogs as I managed to cotton on right from the beginning!
You can put a South Carolina flag up for me.
http://www.50states.com/flag/scflag.htm
Hi! Congratulations on a year of blogging and gathering so many visitors already. I have just started a Swiss-based blog recently called Glückspilz (jofurniss.wordpress.com) and I’ve only managed 364 hits in three months! Got to start somewhere, though… Now I’m off to look for a flag counter… You can add a Schlatt bei Winterthur flag for me (http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Schlatt-blazon.svg&filetimestamp=20080903100407). Tschüss!
Have you considered the possibility that we read blogs while traveling? That may skew your number a bit (although probably not to a great extend). Not that I want to spoil the moment here. 🙂
MISSISSIPPI is here. I have family in Switzerland. Happy Birthday to you. Christina and Lars are my family there.
MS is on the map
Hi Shirley, and thanks. Sadly, the map only shows national flags. But you can see the list of states if you click on the Flag Counter box and then go to Countries
Hmm… I wonder if there are 16 more people in Israel reading your blog or if I am the only one and it’s just counting all the times I visit?
Anyway- happy birthday!
Loved your book and always like to drop by on this blog.
I know this post is a couple of months old but I just had to say that I’m reading this from MONTANA so we can check that off your list!
Excellent. and hallo Montana!
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