Google Analytics: 2.5 Years
In looking at the calendar, I realized that it was about time that I submit another post for a periodic series focused on Google Analytics, which I put in place for this blog about 2.5 years ago (October 2009), although the history of this blog stretches back another 6 months or so. Visitors from an additional 4 countries have visited this blog since the last update, bringing the number of countries of origin to a total of 117 (refer to the posts I submitted during this time period to see how traffic has grown).
Visitors from the top 10 countries of origin came from the United States (45.6%), the United Kingdom (4.2%), Canada (3.9%), India (3.8%), Germany (3.4%), Australia (2.7%), Brazil (2.5%), France (2.5%), Spain (1.9%), and Netherlands (1.9%). The top 5 countries of origin have remained static. From another perspective, visits from the top 10 cities originated in (1) New York City, (2) London, (3) Chicago, (4) Moscow, (5) Bangalore, (6) Singapore, (7) Sydney, (8) San Francisco, (9) Melbourne, and (10) Los Angeles.
The top 15 blog pages visited here are as follows: (1) Anima Sana in Corpore Sano: Part 1, (2) Copycat Advertising Campaign, (3) Liquibase in the Enterprise: Part 2, (4) Switching from ASICS to Brooks, (5) Liquibase in the Enterprise: Part 1, (6) Liquibase in the Enterprise: Part 3, (7) Global Leadership Summit 2010 – Day 1: Andy Stanley, (8) Liquibase in the Enterprise: Part 4, (9) New Book Review: "Manage Your Project Portfolio", (10) RSNA 2010: Quality Improvement? – MRI Workflow, (11) Global Leadership Summit 2010 – Day 1: Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao, (12) Treadmill Maintenance, (13) SpringOne 2GX 2010 – Day 2 Keynote, (14) Anima Sana in Corpore Sano: Part 2, and (15) "Hello Android": Part 4.
Some musical chairs over the last 6 months to some degree in the lower half of these top posts, with two notable exceptions. The fourth in my ongoing series on Liquibase in the enterprise moved up three spots, and the first from my "Hello Android" series made an entrance.
In reviewing these metrics from Google Analytics, I am warming up to the new version. In spending some more time exploring the new user interface, it seems to be much quicker than the old version, and the navigation in my opinion is better. Although the theory is that over time the composition of visitor countries of origin will start to resemble global web traffic in general, I still find this metric interesting, especially since this blog is technical in nature.
Drilling down in the map overlay is much more intuitive, and I like the fact that cities of origin with as little as 1 visitor are now displayed, as opposed to the old version. For example, with the region map overlay of Germany, darker shades of green continue to depict more visitors. Here, we see German states Nordrhein-Westfalen and Baden-Württemberg provide the most visitors during the time period used for the following map:
The hover display for Berlin signifies that the pointer for the user interface is pointed at Berlin. Switching to the city map overlay, darker shades of orange continue to depict more visitors. Here, we see German city Frankfurt am Main provides the most visitors during the time period used for the following map:
The hover display for Berlin now signifies 15 visits for the time period rather than 16. Panning across Berlin, it is apparent that while Berlin is the capital city of Germany, the nearby capital city of the German state Brandenburg, also part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, was actually responsible for one of these visits.
Based on my experience with the old version of Google Analytics, this visit from Potsdam would not have been displayed. The new city map overlay is also more effective in the sense that cities that have been visited less frequently are always depicted on top of cities that have been visited more frequently, as to not crowd out cities of origin with fewer visitors, which was the case with the old version of Google Analytics, as well.
While as a software professional I am routinely cognizant of the fact that multiple browser products exist on the market, each time I revisit Google Analytics for this blog I am reminded that there are many browsers that my colleagues and I do not target for development. For another example time period used to produce the above output, it is apparent that 17 different browsers were used to access this blog.
At the top end of frequency, browsers Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari are readily recognizable. But what about browsers such as Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame, SeaMonkey, Camino, and RockMelt? So I do recognize that Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame makes use of a Chrome plug-in for Internet Explorer, but the metrics above serve as a reminder how little it is actually being used.
According to the release notes for SeaMonkey, the browser has enjoyed regular releases since 2001, with the latest version 2.9 beta being released just 2 days ago. Specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system, Camino has also been released on a regular basis since its initial release as Chimera back in 2002. And RockMelt is a social media web browser based on Chromium just like Chrome.