Well, here we are on August the 1st, which is of course Yorkshire Day! You may be interested to know that, according to the team of dedicated Germans from Blogcounter.de who monitor my traffic stats, last month saw a three-figure average daily unique hit rate for only the second time in Ranter history. On average, 131 unique users checked in daily throughout the month. Naturally, much of this was the work of Osama bin Laden, whose minions drove some 696 uniques through the blog on Thursday, July 7th – setting a site record and beating the past mark, which occurred in May when BoingBoing.net linked to a post regarding Vienna’s new freight trams. However, that spike hardly overshadows regular performances in the 100 region. With the high-traffic month, the Ranter came close to achieving an all-time average in three figures – average unique dailies for the period covered by the new (Blogcounter) stats are currently at 99 unique hits/day. Can we push on over that? Surely we can.
Whilst we’re on the subject of stats, it’s been a good week for DSRs (Disturbing Search Requests). TYR is no.1 on Google for “george clooney foreign parachute wings in peacemaker”. It is also no.15 on Yahoo for tony blair embarrassing images, and no.17 on Yahoo for “is rupert murdoch an arms dealer?” And, even more bizarrely, it is the top result on Wanadoo’s search function for tony blair simian line. Really weirdly, on the same page with me are Soj and the Guardian Newsblog, although none of us has ever mentioned it. Apparently, a simian line is a feature in palmistry that the PM displays – the mumbo-jumbo merchants claim it means “living more intensely with an undercurrent of uneasiness”. Who knew?