I try to check our Google Analytics pretty often, partly due to the info-heavy/metrics-guru I sometimes am, but also due to just plain old curiosity. For those of y’all that aren’t the most web-savvy, Google developed a free and powerful program, called Analytics, that allows the site admin to see tons of site-related traffic data.

For example, the image above shows the number of visits over the last month in Mississippi. I added the red arrow, which shows our expected route through the state until we were stopped by the Jones County Sheriff’s Department. I guess it makes sense, then, that the bulk of our visitors from the state were from that corridor since we’ve been picked up in local radio and newspapers.

Another area I routinely check is how visitors actually get to our site — through search engines, directly, a referring site, etc, which some bloggers and organizations then use to determine where to allocate their advertising budget.

It’s surprising also to see what content resulted in more traffic than others. Sometimes I’ll spend a while perfecting a post or video only to see it not get as many eyes on it as I expected. The Waco Remembered post/video comes to mind.

Anyway, nothing too earth-shattering in this post — just wanted to share a bit of what we (or at least I do) from time to time to get a better grasp on just who it is that you are to better determine what content you like so that we can keep churning it out and therefore keep Motorhome Diaries running.