Who reads this blog?

When I started this blog in late April, I wondered whether it would be worth my time. Of course, part of the reason for blogging is always personal, but I was interested in blogging as a means of making people think. I thought it would be informative to others if I opened my skull for a little inspection. So by the second day, I was looking for a hit counter.

Instead, I stumbled upon Google Analytics--a piece of free code that produces some incredibly detailed data about website activity. The installation was a little tedious, but once it was up and running, I found the information quite intriguing. So, here's the answer to my question:

13,200 people in 46 days. Lately, it's been about 75% returning visitors, and 25% new visitors. Weekdays have settled in right around 330 daily visits. There have been 30,779 pageviews, and an average time on site of 03:14--although that's skewed by a healthy number of very short visits. It looks like those who actually stay on the site at all generally linger for about 05:00 on average. The topic matters, and Gary got his gun permit generated the most visits, followed by Sure sign of spring.

Domain names reflect what I expected, the blog is most read by City employees, probably police employees. Aside from the commercial ISPs, like Road Runner, Cox, Windstream, AOL and so forth, the big sources include Lincoln Public Schools, the University of Nebraska, and the State of Nebraska. I am surprised, however, by the diversity--with large numbers of repeat hits from some far-flung City, County, and private domain names in some interesting geographic locations.

Nebraska accounts for 10,603 of those visits, followed by Colorado, California, Texas, and Georgia. I think this is probably a reflection of a small number of repeat visitors in those States. There is a fair following in the UK--where I have a few friends in policing.

The posted comments are few, but the off-line emails and personal comments have been numerous, and these tell me more about the specific types of people. Google Analytics can't tell me anything beyond the City and network domain. From the comments, I can tell you that the blog is being read by:

• Lincoln police employees and their families
• City employees, including other department directors
• Many professional crime analysts at agencies in the U.S. and Western Europe
• Employees at other U.S. police departments
• Students at faculty at several colleges and Universities
• Students, teachers, and administrators at Lincoln Public Schools
• Ordinary citizens
• A small but loyal core of brutal critics; some internal, some external.

A typical comment came to be from an employee who spotted me in the hallway last week. He looked right and left to make sure no one was watching, leaned in and whispered something like, "Hey Chief, I like your blog. People are talking about it. I think it's a good thing." He did not, of course, want to be seen or heard giving the chief a quasi-compliment. In police departments, that's just not politically correct, I guess.

I'll have to be more serious, I suppose, since people are apparently paying more attention than I ever expected!