Facts and figures

Daily pageviews of "Kajaksport op groot water" - Onestat Sitecounter

At the end of the year you are supposed to look back. Radio, television and papers publish annual reviews and yearly statistics on all kind of themes: “the year in sport, the top 2000, crime figures decreasing, and 97 % of the inhabitants of Woerden likes Woerden…” Stuff like that. Let me add my part to this odd habit.

Exactly a year ago I added a webcounter to this blog: 9300 visitors made just over 13000 pageviews at "Kajaksport op groot water" since. The average visitor viewed 1.44 pages during his visit. From a www-view it’s peanuts, but from a sea-kayak perspective: that’s an awful lot! A fascinating part of the webounter I find the country stats, it gives a 'kick' seeing how many countries from around the world are visiting my website! The top 6:
1. Nederland 6.378 48,74%
2. Verenigde Staten van Amerika 1.680 12,84%
3. Duitsland 1.487 11,36%
4. Verenigd Koninkrijk 865 6,61%
5. Zweden 539 4,12%
6. Canada 502 3,84%
Last few months the number of foreign visits is increasing (Dutch visitors gone back to 35-40 %). Spain is new in the top 5 and Sweden has gone down to place nr. 7. Congratulations to Wenley! Top referrer is Google with about 10-12 %, directly followed by Derricks–blog (9%).

In 2006 I published 130 posts. I couldn’t imagine this before I started. It began 1,5 year ago with the Kajakwoerden-MSN-space as a service to the fellow paddlers on my kayak-trips and courses: an easy way to share pictures and reports. I can’t use that excuse anymore, the trip reports are only a minor part of this blog. Blogging about my kayak-thoughts has become something on it’s own, some kind of egocentric thing.
Over the year I noticed I am not the only addict: the seakayak-bloglist is getting longer and longer. However: not with Dutch kayakers. It surprises me that there are relatively few Dutch (sea)kayakers blogging. The few ones I know, are blogging in English! Though almost the half of the visitors of my blog are Dutch, the comments I get come for 80 % of the foreign visitors. And while there are in some countries very active seakayak communities with lively forums (e.g. seakayakguidebook.co.uk or seekajakforum.de), initiatives for a Dutch Kayakforum failed. This doesn’t match at all with the recent the figures of the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA). In a recent report of the EIAA the Dutch are presented as very active participants in social-networking sites (Hyves, Myspace etc.): 34 % of the Dutch is a regular visitor of these sites, remarkable more than the European average of 24 %. Ok: Dutch seakayakers are special, I know ;-)
Almost the same can be written about the German seakayakers. There is a lively Seakayakforum, but there are hardly any German Seakayakers blogging: Freya is the only German Blogger I know. How come?