I got a wake-up call when I went into Google Analytics and took a look at the volume of Twelve Mile Circle readers by metropolitan area. That’s not a tab I normally examine. I’m much more interested in the state and town totals. I was taken aback because it suggested that there were a handful of places where nobody had ever visited 12MC.
It seemed confounding, preposterous even, that after five years of running Google Analytics on the site and logging literally hundreds of thousands of visitors, that not a single person had viewed the blog from several locations. Those places appear as the non-shaded spots (completely white) in the screen grab reproduced above.
However, it turned out to be a glitch. I found metropolitan user statistics for all of those areas when I went into the individual state maps and drilled down from there. Apparently Google Analytics didn’t shade places with fewer than a hundred visitors in some instances — although not in all instances — when viewed on its national map. Weird.
Fewer Than a Hundred
12MC has indeed received visitors from every metropolitan area in the United States. Clearly there’s room to grow in several of those places, though. Here are the locations sending fewer than 100 readers over the last five years:
- Twin Falls ID = 98
- Lima OH = 93
- St. Joseph MO = 86
- Laredo TX = 81
- Yuma AZ-El Centro CA = 76
- Meridian MS = 71
- Greenwood-Greenville MS = 67
- Alpena MI = 59
- Zanesville OH = 48
- North Platte NE = 43
- Victoria TX = 41
- Glendive MT = 4
I still can’t explain why some of these areas appear on the Google Analytic U.S. map in the expected manner with properly recorded visits, and others do not.
My mind wandered naturally to the bottom of the list where I noticed Glendive, Montana. Four visits? Really? That’s less than a single visit per year. I dug a little deeper. Three visits came from the town of Glendive proper and landed on my US ferry map, my pathetic Montana counties page, and an account of the sliver of Canada that drains to the Gulf of Mexico. The fourth visitor came from tiny Terry, Montana expressing an interest in river headwaters and sources.
Glendive?
I decided I must know more about Glendive (map) and why it sent so few visitors to the site. First, there’s no truth to the rumor that it attracted my attention because it sits only 100 road miles from Ismay (Joe). That was a happy coincidence.
Glendive is a genuine Google mapping anomaly completely on its own. The unit that’s labeled Glendive is quite small considering its geographic placement. Additionally the population density is exceedingly low. It is surrounded by much larger geographic units labeled Great Falls, Billings, Rapid City and Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson. Why does Glendive stand on its own amongst those much larger cities and areas.
As I searched through various mapping resources, the closest equivalent I could find to the map used by Analytics was Nielsen’s Designated Market Areas®. People are probably more familiar with this concept in the form of “Nielsen Ratings” for television and radio programs in the United States. Nielsen divides the U.S. into 210 media markets for purpose of viewer measurements and advertisement rates. I would never claim that Google borrowed Nielsen’s breakouts as the basis for their Analytics tool although there are some striking similarities including the Glendive anomaly.
All kidding aside, if anyone knows of a better source for the Analytics map please let me know in the comments. It seems to make some sense that it’s based roughly on the DMA concept since Google Analytics is designed to measure viewer consumption of a media product too.
Broadcast Area
Glendive has its own broadcast antenna (Lat/Long via FCC website).
The City of Glendive is actually quite sizeable for its rural area with nearly 5,000 residents. On the other hand it’s a very small media market area. In fact it’s dead last, number 210, with only 4,050 households (note: residents vs. households obviously aren’t the same). Glendive is served primarily by Glendive Broadcasting, with an AM station (KXGN), FM station (KDZN), and television station (KXGN) that broadcasts both the CBS and NBC networks on digital channels 5.1 and 5.2 respectively. The larger Glendive area has around 30,000 homes. Glendive Broadcasting notes:
“Over 53 years of service to Glendive and the surrounding area… Glendive and Dawson County are the trading nucleus for nine counties of the East-Central border area of Montana and Western North Dakota. One of the richest areas of the state with an income generated by wheat, sugar beets and cattle ranching.”
That still doesn’t answer why Glendive has its own media market. I couldn’t find an answer. I’m going to guess that it had something to do with the longevity of television broadcasting in that location combined with a lack of coverage from surrounding areas.
Here’s the best part though. A 30-second advertisement during prime time can be purchased for only $36. Think of the possibilities. I could send the station a homemade 12MC promotional video, run it three times for barely more than a hundred bucks, and probably quadruple the number of Glendive visitors to the website in a single evening!
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