SPANNING THE GLOBE

This blog is back powered by blogger.  They provide stats on number of reads, countries of readers, pages read, operating systems that are used to view the blog, etc....  Today I clicked on audience to check the stats for where readers are coming from (origin of country).  It said among other strange countries, Kazakhstan.  I giggled out loud as the image from a scene in "Austin Powers" came to mind - they use Kazakhstan as a reference in that movie!


I suspect that those stats of country of origin aren't always accurate.  I do not believe that there are a large number of readers in China, though it tells me there are.  What I think is that my blog is somehow being used abroad for something fishy.  Occasionally spam comments come through.  They are funny, usually not relevant to what I have written about, and really bad English.  I did though once get a comment on a post written in French.  I had to have my son-in-law, who is fluent in French, translate it for me. 

My wonderful husband, who foolishly believes I am one pen stroke away from a Pulitzer, says he thinks they are reposting my blog in Chinese and making money off my words.  To which I replied, "Well, at least someone is making money off it!"  Which reminds me of the "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry gets royalty checks for a penny from Japan and has to endorse them all.  The exchange value stinks! 

I really don't believe that the Chinese have a desire to read what a middle aged white woman from America thinks.  Nor do I think people in Kazakhstan care either.  Most of the time I question the validity of the U.S. readership:)  Stats can be skewed easily.  We can make something look better or worse very easily with a spin. 

The one area that I know is correct is the amount of people who surf for porn and click on my blog post titles from a Google search thinking they are going to get an eye full of porn.  I regularly have massive reads on post titles such as, "Cleavage Wars", and "A Salute To The Small Breasted Gals".  I track their entry point on Google and it is a porn search.  It gives me pleasure and comfort to know that I basically performed a bait and switch on them.

I am desperately hoping to pick up a reader or two in some other strangely obscure country whose first language isn't even English.  Accomplishing that feat will most definitely make me feel like I am impacting the world, or possibly like I am being used as a spam front across the continent of Asia.  Either one is a feather in my cap for me.  I mean really, who cares about real readers, fake ones will do

 

Like ABC's Wide World of Sports program with Jim McKay, that aired from 1961-1998, said in its weekly introduction . . . "Spanning the globe . . ."  That's what my blog is doing:)