Who's been reading my blog?

Ages and ages ago, not long after I set up this blog, I added a site statistics manager to the coding, in this case, sitemeter (see the number at the bottom-left of the blog). It is a nifty device which allows me to see who has been reading my blog lately, and/or where they are. It also shows me how they found my blog, whether by a direct address, or through a google (or other) search, or if it was a link from another blog (and it tells me which blog too). Readers fall into one of two categories; regular readers or one-night stands. Most of the google searches are one-off readings.

Recently I noticed a new regular reader*. Someone who lives in Brussels, uses a Mac with Safari 1.3 and has English set as the system language and who accesses the internet through the ISP Coditel. Anyway, because this reader seems to have become a regular, I wondered who it could be (after all, I don't know many people in Brussels!). I looked back through my reader list and found the first entry for this chap. His first viewing of my page showed that he found my blog through a link from a former-former blog of Aggie's (I think she's on her third blog since that one). Luckily, Aggie had also set up a sitemeter account on her old blog, so I was able to look through her statistics to see who's been reading her porridge lately. It seems this guy in Brussels found her site thanks to a google search for the following words: "sean drake uq". The "uq" was presumably added because I'm not on the first page if you just do a search for my name. Since that first visit, this reader has come to my page from the links on several of my friends' blogs, specifically Kat, Nat and Nick. Now, as I said before, I don't know many people in Brussels, and the number is severely reduced when I refine the terms to "people I know in Brussels who know that I went to UQ, and who also know Kat, Nat and Nick". In fact, I can only think of one person who fits that description. I told Kat about my new reader, without mentioning who I thought it was, and she immediately came back with the same name, so while it's still circumstantial, I'm fairly certain I know who it is. The situation amuses me greatly. Definitely in a "laughing at" rather than a "laughing with" kind of way.


* All of the reader information is publically available - just click on the sitemeter number on the bottom left of the page to see who reads my blog, or what your entry looks like. I have had (mostly one-off) readers in many interesting places and countries.