I just wanted to share some interesting statistics about this site. Being a soldier, I know a lot about OPSEC. It’s drilled into our heads day after day. I also work in Force Protection, so my job is to find ways keep soldiers alive and safe. So, while I don’t censor the stuff I write in here, I’m cognizant of the people who are reading it. That is one reason that I never fulfilled my statement about posting video here. The last thing I want is our training getting watched by terrorists and suddenly I’m responsible for soldiers dying instead of the other way around. I also don’t give out names or take pictures of the people playing the roles of terrorists here. I don’t show WHO puts the IEDs on the sides of the road. I don’t show the soldiers who were “killed” by them.

Here’s why:

This month, more than 42 countries logged onto my site, excluding the US. Fortunately for me, none of them was Nigeria or I’d be out of business in at least one category! Sierra Leone wasn’t in there either. However, France, Germany and Russia are all avid monthly readers. I wonder why that is. Hopefully, I can change their minds about supporting a good cause in Iraq and helping with the load (hint hint).

Saudi Arabia is in the top 3, again excluding the US. I’m not sure if my website is translated anywhere into Arabic, but there are a lot of people in the Kingdom that speak English, I’m sure.

As a lover of the Spanish language, and fluent linguist, I’m happy that many Spanish speaking countries read here. Mexico takes the #2 spot in number of visitors, right after the United States. I hope it’s because they really want to help secure out borders. If you’re an illegal alien, you won’t get any tips on crossing here. Colombia, Spain, Argentina and Venezuela are all repetive readers. Me gusta mucha que a ustedes les gusto. Estoy divertido que me leen. Si, ustedes necesitan algo, favor de dar me correo por email, mis amigos. La direccion esta a la derecha. The problem is that I can’t make tildas, so some of this looks wrong.

This is the part I like to read though: the search stats. Here are the phrases that people type into search engines to link to this site:

* zak wemba (whoever that is)
* chihuahua antenna balls
* michael crook gets bashed video (lot of people wanting to see that)
* llama lips
* popsicle stick boat
* sacramento effigy sheehan (this one leads to my Now She’s Lost It post)
* the historical perspective of the nigerian business law
* in baghdad iraq some insurgents got what was coming to them
* iraq babykiller (hmm, I hope that didn’t refer to me)
* adb ouagadougou burkina faso (I’m just as confused)
* see mouth moving all i hear is blah a dirty
* currency exchange in holland (it’s $1.19 to 1 Euro, by the way)
* sexy american soldiers (I’m sure my link to this search was on age 53 of 54, right before Beetle Bailey)
* motherless babies (for the record, I have a mother and so do my kids)

My most popular searches this month: Sheehan!

And finally, the be all end all statistic that described my readers:

They use a Windows operating system (89%), accessing the site with Internet Explorer (74%; 12% use Mozilla Firefox like me, far superior) and stay up to 30 seconds (67%). They tend to use Google while searching for my site on a .net server from the United States between 1300-1500 on Tuesdays.

With that in mind, I’ll make sure that Tuesdays are more interesting in the future and that posts are up by 1300. But, I’m not switching to Internet Explorer!