Since You Asked

So how to I track my blog? www.statcounter.com....you register, its free, you add your blog...and you have to add stat counter to your blog as a HTML/javascript gadget. I'm sure there are a lot of similar sites like this one. It can be invisible or it can be on your page showing how many hits your page is getting. Once you've done that there are a ton of options to play with as far as seeing a breakdown of hits on your page. You can't get personal detailed info about your readers but you can see cities, states, and countries. You can also see where they found your page, under "visitor paths"(for instance, it shows me which one of your pages they were on before they clicked on my link, so if i see your link but it's not the city and state where you live, then I know someone clicked on my link from your page but not you....so there is strong a possibility that these "strangers" are friends of friends browsing blogs, but you never know)...this is also where you can see if they downloaded a picture while they were looking at your page... I'm pretty sure they download it just by clicking on the image to enlarge it. You can see how many times a visitor returned, how long they stayed, etc. You can click on the "magnify" icon and it can tell you everything about the computer they were on when they viewed your page like the operating system, ip address, internet provider...etc. It takes a while to figure out how the site works but hopefully this will help for those of you who are interested. So just think, if i can get this much info on other people...and I'm pretty much computer illiterate, imagine what creepers could find out about me. Not to scare you, but just be careful about what information you make public. So basically when I see a reader from another country...or a city/state in which we don't have friends or relatives, I can assume it is someone that we don't know. And the random comments are obvious. I hope all of that made sense.