Getting to know you
This articles started out life as ‘we know where you live’. It is not
literally true, so my editor gave it the folksy title 'Getting to know you'. We
really do know a lot about your surfing habits. So..
Should you worry about your personal privacy on the web?
Definitely not. Do you seriously mind that we know what version of
which browser you are using and with what operating software? Do you object to
us finding out which website you came to us from? Or if we know whether you used a search
engine and which one? And who cares which page you were reading just before you left?
To you this is truly boooooring. But to a nerd like me who runs a website - well, I love it. If you are serious about running a good site you need to
make sure that pages work with the many possible technical permutations. Each
browser handles things differently and we want to look our best in all these
environments. So I need to know which browsers to check.
We know that Sundays and Thursdays are the favourite days for writers to
surf. Half your visits used to be on these two days. But over the years the
load has spread and now the only quieter day is Saturday. It can't be a poor TV schedule
as we are talking worldwide.
People prefer to visit later in the evening but, as
the world spins, we cannot even be sure about this. We can also deduce
that you are an honest, hard-working crowd, because very few of you appear
to surf from work. I infer this from the fact that less than 5% are on the networked
computers which people normally use in offices.
We can also work out that you are not serious techies. You don’t
rush out and buy the very latest technology. How very sensible. There are
plenty of Windows 98 folk out there and early versions of Netscape are still
popular. We are starting to introduce a few ‘flashy' bits to the site, but we
know not to rely on the latest features or add-ins, as a sizeable minority will
not be able to enjoy them.
We also know which country you live in. However, statistics can
mislead. Some countries host major servers. The 104,000 folk in Tonga appear to
be welded to the web. The explanation is that AOL has a big server there, so many
users are routed via this tiny island. The locals probably prefer the wetter sort of
surfing. But 85% of our visitors are from outside the UK, where we are based, we are
working to
provide services relevant to writers worldwide during 2005.
Believe me, it can give you quite a buzz to discover that there are
hundreds of people from China logging on to your site.
So, if we don’t actually know exactly where you live, do we know who you
are? You bet we do. You are 123.45.67.89 or something similar. That is your
Internet id. It lets the World Wide Web find you and return the pages you
request. The good news is that your service provider probably provides a new
identity each time you log on. So no fear of electronic stalking.
Our site, like most serious sites, has a fixed address.
When you buy a web address the administrators link your web name to a number.
This is looked up each time on the Domain Name Server, (DNS). The DNS matches the
www.writersservices.com part (our URL) to an Internet Protocol address (IP).
This is our unique four-part, eight bit number (here we are talking computer
bits), that
identifies the site every time someone types in WritersServices.com (195.40.15.102
- 106
- You can see why we choose to
use names, rather than numbers).
Most sites report that 70% of visitors leave after visiting just one page. This is not
surprising. Just think how many shops you wander into or books you inspect
before deciding to buy. We are pleased that many more of WritersServices.com
visitors follow links to other pages on the site. We call this 'stickiness'. Our target is
50% going to another page, and we are half way there.
We worry about our figures.
So you still have your secrets and, in
spite of all our statistics, you will still keep us guessing.
© Charles Jones 2001
Revised Jan 2005
Is Internet use seasonal?
Six months back, the weekend was the most popular
time to visit the site. As summer has returned to the northern hemisphere, usage now peaks
on Tuesdays. As 90% of the site visitors live in the northern half of our
globe, could it be that there
are better things for writers to do during a summer weekend than sit at their computers?
Friday is still the day you abstain from the site. This is, anecdotally, the
day that hackers are most active. It is also the customary day for sites to perform their
backup procedures.
With visitor numbers measured in tens of thousands, this cannot be a
statistical blip, so we will keep an eye on this piece of web trivia!
July 02 postscript
While we watch you, search engines are probing
WritersServices
