300

This fine little hunk of writing represents the 300th post to this blog. It took about five years to hit 100, then an additional 11 months to hit 200. I'm proud to announce it took slightly longer than five months to move from that figure to 300. The speed with which I reached this small milestone is likely a product of my participation in NaBlaPoMo.

So what has happened over these past 100 posts? According to Google Analytics, this site has seen visitors from 64 countries including Tanzania, Columbia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Malta.

And what of the Faroe Islands? Just after post 200, I launched my campaign to earn more readers in the Faroe Islands, a small semi-autonomous group of islands in the north Atlantic. Since then I've gotten more than 400 hits from the Faroe Islands, representing some 85 unique visitors. A blog based in the Faroe Islands sends more visitors to this site than any other source except Google. That's no small task when you consider there are less than 50,000 people living on these islands. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue, and result with me actually visiting the islands one day. Time will tell.

As for content, there are some unusual posts sitting at the top of the pile. In 2006, I wrote about the children's filmstrip series "Patch the Pony." Apparently, there isn't a lot of information on the Internet about Patch, because that post was the most viewed page (aside from front page) over the last six months. The old post on the LA Clippers hat also draws a lot of traffic for reasons I have yet to understand. But sitting in the #3 spot is significant because it's a relatively new post. The post on my discovery of sheep! magazine hit this site only 10 days ago, but it caused a real spike in readership here. I guess people really love sheep. Or perhaps sheep!, as the case may be.

The search terms people have used to find this site have been varied and odd. The top few spots are taken up by various permutations of my name, which is to be expected. Next up is "Shahara Simmons," the wife of Clippers star Elton Brand. It's odd that I'm a top search result for this woman (who by all accounts appears to be a perfectly decent person), but I've just given in to it now.

But the strangest new popular search term that brought people here is "my girlfriend is a prostitute." Almost 40 people have visited this site while searching Goggle for that term. I was most puzzled by this until I realized that I actually wrote that sentence in a post on an old Dr. Dre song last year. So now I'm just amazed that this is such a popular search term. Is this really a big problem that people have? Perhaps I'm sheltered.

So I think I've peered into my navel long enough for one post. For longtime readers, thanks for sticking with his. For the newbies, hopefully you'll continue to find something of value in this space in the future. And if you're the Faroe Islands Tourism Board... call me. As always, if you have anything you'd like to see here in the next 100 posts, do let me know.