Another New Visitor Roundup

My recent article on Running the Table with visitors from the United States reminded me that I haven’t provided a new visitor roundup in quite awhile. That’s where I recognize and salute an initial visitor from a country that has not previously sent a viewer to the website. It’s becoming increasingly unusual. Nonetheless the number of new pickups I discovered surprised me.


Sounds Reasonable

Port Moresby - Boroko Market. Photo by ILO Asia-Pacific; (CC BY 2.0)
Boroko Market in Port Moresby

Several new visitors arrived through entirely logical searches. My first Swaziland visitor arrived from Mbabane and landed on 12MC’s Swaziland tag. Likewise someone from Maseru, Lesotho landed on the Lesotho tag. That’s a typical pattern. People often set-up standard feed searches and follow the coverage of their nation on the blogs. I’ve received a number of first-time national visitors that way.

A first-time visitor from Papua New Guinea hit my Australian Ferry Map page. He arrived from Boroko, a neighborhood in the capital city of Port Moresby (map). Boroko has a renowned shopping district and would be one of the more cosmopolitan areas of the nation. That certainly increases the likelihood of Internet access and potential visitors. Since that time I’ve received a veritable flood of Papua New Guinea visitors, a total of three! All of them landed on pages related to Australia, a place of close geographic proximity to them.

My first Solomon Islands visitor also arrived during this period, investigating Islands Below Sea Level. I suppose that would interest me too if I lived within the widely scattered South Pacific islands during an era of climate change. Some of those islands are volcanic and have decent altitude. Others are atolls with considerably less altitude. My logs couldn’t pinpoint the person’s exact location. However, I hope he lives on the high ground.


I Don’t See the Connection, but I’m Happy They Found Me

Ouagadougou. Photo by Maarten van der Bent; (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Ouagadougou

I smiled when I saw my visitor from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (map). This became one of my favorite city names long ago. Then I learned one actually pronounces it something closer to Wagadugu instead of Ooga-Dooga. We can thank its French colonial heritage for the spelling. The person who stopped by my site wanted to know more about Mexico for some unknown reason.

Ditto for my initial visitor from Chad. What was it about Lancaster Minnesota to Lancashire England that drew his or her interest?


How Did This Happen?

Landscape. Photo by Dirk HR Spennemann; (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Kolonia

Someone from Kolonia in the Federated States of Micronesia also paid a visit (map). Kolonia is the capital of FSM’s Pohnpei state. But do not confuse it with Colonia the capital of FSM’s Yap state. To add more to the confusion, Kolonia is on the same island as Palikir, the national capital.

However that’s not what surprised me. No, with an average temperature of 26°C to 27°C (80°F to 81°F) all year long — about as close to paradise as one can imagine — what series of events caused them to land on a page about Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in Winter? Maybe perfection bored them and they wanted to try some snow?

A visitor from Vientiane, Laos also caused me to scratch my head. Why would they care about White’s Ferry Across the Potomac River, an obscure spot even for people in the United States?

Only a few more blank spots remain unfilled on my visitor map. I don’t know how many more of these new visitor articles I’ll be able to post in the future.

Comments

2 responses to “Another New Visitor Roundup”

  1. Hamish Avatar
    Hamish

    Have you considered that some of these visitors are regular visitors on vacation. Maybe your visitor from Laos is a Virginian on vacation checking up on some information from home. I know that when I travel, espesically with my laptop, I visit the same sites I do at home. In fact I bet a bunch of your hits from Australia last year were from me while on the road, and not necessarily a surge of readers from down under.

    Keep up the good work – this is one of the best blogs on the interweb.

    1. Twelve Mile Circle Avatar

      That’s entirely possible, too! I know that one of the blogs I read regularly noticed a sudden spike in traffic from the Netherland Antilles when I went to St. Martin (yes, even though I was on the French side of the island, and even though the Netherland Antilles has been disestablished). If that’s a possible source, I’m both thrilled and flattered. I’ve had readers who’ve intentionally done that to help my count and when that has occurred it’s been most appreciated. I have it on good authority that I once had a visitor from Vatican City but for some reason it wasn’t recorded that way in Google Analytics… maybe similar to my St. Martin example?

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