Blog Post No. 800: Think Locally, Blog Globally

Welcome to my 800th blog post! I couldn't have asked for a nicer visitor.

Google provides many nifty statistical tools to its bloggers, and I admit to being fascinated by some of them. While I don't care at all which browser people are using to read this blog, I have been fascinated all year by how my humble blog attracts readers around the world. In February I noted that the blog was starting to accumulate page views in China, which was a totally new and unanticipated phenomenon. I commented on this several times, and I avidly follow China's progress here every day.

China is currently sixth among all nations in monthly readership, but it has not yet made it into the top ten list for all-time page views. If current trends continue, that should happen some time late this year and Brazil, I'm afraid, will be leaving this list.

Attempted Bloggery All-Time Pageviews by Countries, July 4, 2013

Please allow me to make a few additional observations. This list is top-heavy, with readership in the U.S. being approximately 100 times readership in Brazil. As a result, towards the bottom of the list, the results can easily be skewed by one or two dedicated readers in each country. The statistics can also be skewed by referer spam.

Of the ten countries on this list, six are Epcot nations. Five Epcot nations are not on the list: Norway, Japan, China, Morocco, and Mexico. The strong showing of Russia makes it unlikely that this list can ever be an all-Epcot list. Why I think this is important is not clear even to me.

Nations of Africa and the Middle East are not well-represented among the blog's readers. A similar fate may await South America if Brazil is pushed off the list by China. The entire Southern hemisphere would then be underrepresented, although Australia is English-speaking and may well remain strong. Overall readership in non-English-speaking countries is probably facilitated by Google Translator and other similar translation programs.

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