Ghosts from the Past

October 30, 2005

I came across an email the other day that I had saved back in August of 2000. It got me to thinking and looking around wondering just what happens next. The email was from my web stat counter and it gave me the following statistics: -- Site Summary ---
Visits
Total ........................ 1,041
Average per Day .................. 5
Average Visit Length .......... 1:27
This Week ....................... 44
Page Views
Total ........................ 1,617
Average per Day .................. 8
Average per Visit .............. 1.6
This Week ....................... 50

One thousand visits, and sixteen hundred page views.

The average visitor walked in and out of the store before I could even get "Can I help you" out of my mouth.

So what's it like these days, and what's it matter anyway?

Well, it matters because it takes a lot of work to maintain a web site, not to mention the costs to store all those photos and stuff.

Today, just over 5 years later, I've had something on the order of 156,000 visits and 720,000 page views.

People come from around the globe, these days pushing 200 visits a day.

They still don't stay very long. Sure, some are there for 5 to 10 minutes, looking at quotes or the galleries - but for the most part, the numbers are the same - average stay, less than a minute and a half.

Be that as it may, it does appear that I'll break a million page views in just one more year.

And for what?

I don't know.

Really, I don't.

But I don't plan on making any changes anytime soon.

For those of you who are really "old timers" on the web, I found a site that might be of interest.

You see there is a web site out there that archives old web pages, 40 billion of them give or take a few.

And right there among a billion or so ghosts from the past (including some of my old pages)

Check out the WaybackMachine.