American in Berlin

Hello Saskatoon

I did not bother to add a visitor counter to my blog back in August. I emailed the blog address to 30 friends/family members and hoped they might occasionally visit the site to read about my escapades around Europe. I know those 30 people, so why bother to track when they visit the blog? But when a friend noticed that his blog was being read in cities where he had no friends, I began to wonder how far beyond the original 30 my readership had expanded. My curiosity got the better of me and I installed a tracker a while back.

People from Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and the US, to name just a few, have visited the site. (If only someone from the South Pole would stop by, I would have all the continents covered!) It’s also been fun to see which Google searches people have used to find my site, whether they meant to or not. Some of my favourites include: “guido hairstyles," "berlin style" and “KaDeWe and the effects on the citizens of Berlin.” I have also learned that I am the 8th listing that pops up if you google “cheese spaetzle:-)” Sometimes you can even tell where people work because of the servers that register. Surfing at work (horror of horror) seems to be evenly spread across universities, the government, and companies. Most strangely, someone from the “Defense Information Systems Agency Global Control Center” googled “Berlin road trip” and got my blog. What the heck is that?

After intially being a bit concerned, I’ve decided this isn’t the same thing as “Google stalking” because it is my website and because now I have written about it:-) Plus, there’s nothing practical that I can do with this information. It’s just crazy to know that somehow people from around the world have stumbled upon the ramblings of an American in Berlin. So hello to Saskatoon and Rhineland-Pfalz and Arkansas and friends, relatives and people I will never know. Thanks for stopping by.

posted by Erin @ 8:39 AM