The Russians

Early in the existence of this blog, I installed a free version of Site Meter, which enabled me to track some pretty specific information about visitors to the blog.  Then at some point I could no longer see or link to Site Meter.  I explored a little on the internet, and learned that there were concerns about the security of Site Meter, and i made no effort to recover it.  Recent internet research informs me that Site Meter now is no more.  

Blogger is the host of the blog.   Along with design and other nice assistance for a non-programmer like me, Blogger provides some statistics about page visits.  I’m able to find out approximately how many page visits the blog receives, and how visitors are referred - whether by another website or by a search, and what search terms brought visitors.  Back in the days when the internet was a smaller place, the blog was much higher on search results.  I am able to tell what proportion of blog visitors use what operating system.  I can tell where blog visitors are located, although not with very much specificity.  There is world map where countries housing blog visitors show up in green.  

There aren’t a lot of surprises.  The blog has a small audience, which includes me, mostly but not exclusively located in the United States.  But you know where else?  Russia.  I sometimes look at Russian blogs, but not significantly often. I draw some limited conclusions here, about just how busy and thorough someone in Russia is on the internet.  I am curious to see the statistical results for this post, and whether it brings about any change.  Here is the map showing all time page views, and the numbers.

Entry            Pageviews

United States         39720

Russia                    8907

China                     2571

France                   1322

Germany                1188

Ukraine                   767

United Kingdom      719

Poland                    523

South Korea           500

Brazil                      409

The chickens up at the top have nothing to do with Russians, at least as far as I know.  They belong to one of the painters I paint with and his wife.  Despite appearances, there were only two chickens.  Each chicken appears more than once.  I have thought that I would do better to sketch people with the same dispassionate observation I sketch chickens.  People seem more complicated to me.  But probably not to the chickens.