Odd stats note

This morning I was looking at the StatCounter account for this blog and noted over a dozen unique hits from five different locations (four states and another country) with the same google search landing on the same blog post within an hour.

Coincidence? Who knows?
Weird? Well, to me, yes.

• Goggle search: kiddie lit creation 1931
• Blog Hit: The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• U.S. Locations: Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina
• Other Country: Mexico

I found it interesting that each search used kiddie lit and not children's literature. I don't know if they found what they were looking for here, especially since the occurence of "kiddie lit" in that particular post directed people to other blogs and 1931 was simply in reference to Hugo, but it was fodder for a quick Sunday morning post.

Update, later that same day...

Ask and you shall receive; thanks to a comment from Puzzler I now know that one of the crossword clues in today's Washington Post was "Kiddie lit creation of 1931." I looked around a bit and found that the children's literature character Babar the Elephant was first published in 1931. It's probably too late in the day to be of any help, plus I have no clue if it is correct, but just in case:

"Babar made his debut in "The Story of Babar" published in 1931 by Jean de Brunhoff. Jean created and illustrated seven Babar titles before dying in 1937. Laurent de Brunhoff, son of Jean, continues his father's work and is still writing Babar books." - Treehouse TV

"The complexity of King Babar's world, and some of its contradictions, are partly the result of the fact that his long life has been chronicled by two different biographers. Babar's history began in Paris in 1931, when the pianist Cecile de Brunhoff invented a bedtime story about a baby elephant for her sons, who were then five and six years old. The next day the boys repeated the tale to their father, the artist Jean de Brunhoff, who was inspired to write it down, expand it, illustrate it, and publish it in 1931 as The Story of Babar." - by Alison Lurie, 12/16/2004, NYT Book Review of The Royal Family.

Children's Book Mall

I just finished taking a quick look at my visitor paths in StatCounter and noticed someone found this blog via the Children's Book Mall website. Unfamiliar with the site I took a quick look to try and find myself (and there I am). I will take some time later today to investigate further, but it looks as if there are many links to blogs and information regarding children's books; categories include:

• Authors
• Booksellers
• Children's Literature
• Education/Teacher Resources
• Librarian Resources (I'm here)
• Newsletters
• Podcasts

There is also a link to puppets I will have to check out, I need more puppets. It appears evaluations are done every 90 days and links are updated, pulling less popular and adding new ones, so my stay on this site may be short lived. Time will tell.

Tags: Children's Book Mall, Blog links, Children's literature

Statistical curiousity

No, this is not a post on any the three topics I introduced yesterday, but I do have one drafted and will be posting it later today. It is, unfortunately or fortunately, one more bow to my freakishly annoying fixation with blog statistics.

A couple of days ago I noticed that while I had burned feeds and added an appropriate number of "chicklets" to other blogs I use, for some reason I had not done so here. I quickly remedied that oversight (hence the addition of Hypothetical Feeds on the sidebar) and this afternoon determined it might be fun to see how the site states from Feedburner compared to my statistics from StatsCounter.

In the short amount of time it has taken my to create this post there have already been two visitors, eight page views, two visits defined as "incoming" (both from my blogger ID), and one visit defined as "outgoing." Neither of these options for blog statistics are infallible, but it might be fun to compare.

Yes, I know, it is a sickness of sort. But the first step is admitting the problem, right?

Tags: Blog statistics, StatsCounter, Feedburner

Another Milestone

This is blog post number 250, another milestone number (in my opinion at least). Had I posted on Saturday, I would have hit 250 on my birthday ... a numbered milestone I am not willing to share. I decided to share a few of the statistics I am so obsessed with viewing.


Statscounter: February has been the busiest month to date with 648 hits/page loads. Oddly enough, that number equals over 1/3 of the totals for the six months I have been using the counter. I continue to be intrigued by people actually reading this blog and being able to tell what posts people are most frequently hit and what search strings are bringing readers to the blog; to date the Cambridge who's who post(s), the Newbery posts, and several different children’s book reviews have the highest interest.


Technorati: I've really moved up in the world with Technorati links! From zero to the current statistic of 8 (yes, you read correctly) links from six different blogs. I have learned this number is obviously not infallible since several of the links back I have on the sidebar do not show up in Technorati, but did appear in Statscounter.


ZoomCloud: I still have the word cloud located in the sidebar, but am not as happy with the product as I was when first placing it in the blog. First, people clicking on particular words does not register with great accuracy. I had to remove the first incarnation of my word cloud from the side bar and it continued to garner hits a month after it ceased to exist. This brings me to the second point of dissatisfaction. I tried to delete the first ZoomCloud to no avail, it will not go away regardless of what type of connection the computer has (dial up, network, or cable). I find that aspect of the service very annoying. To be fair, it is a free service and I guess you get what you pay for.


LibraryThing: I am not getting any specific statistics from LibraryThing but I still love the site. I did a bit of tweaking with the sidebar widgets (big shock there) from LibraryThing this afternoon so I could add a recreational reading widget beyond the my library book mash. Now it is going to represent the most recently read recreational titles.

As noted in the last post, I did receive and read the newest J.D. Robb book on Friday. I will be posting about it tomorrow.


Tags: Statscounter, ZoomCloud, Technorati, LibraryThing