Year In Review : How Did You Find Me?

Taking another look-back at the stats on this blog for the past month and the year (or at least since Blogger added Stats) has shown some interesting developments.

As I mentioned in my last look at the stats on this blog, I've been using Twitter to tweet about posts.  I also started using Feedburner that will read the RSS feed and tweet the updates.  Linking posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN has also driven traffic to the blog.

My top referring sites are Google, Find1Friend and Facebook.  I was not familiar with Find1Friend, apparently it aggregates all social media.

The most popular search terms this year include:

• blogger : self-explanatory

• forrest chew salamonia indiana : Forrest is a member of my Chew family.  I wish whoever searched for him would have contacted me.

• travis lemaster : who is looking for me?  an old girlfriend?

• mary prevost : I have no idea how they found my blog through these search terms.  There are no references to the Prevost surname here.

• lambertson and wilson families of new jersey and ohio : Yes!  These are my people.  Who are you?  Why didn't you contact me?

There is now a new most popular post, GeneaLeaks, which rose quickly to the top after being highlighted by Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings.  Thanks, Randy!  Clearly, being mentioned by a popular blogger will lead to page views.

Just in the past month, there have been three posts that have received a great deal of interest, quickly moving them up to the top of my popular posts.  Once again, I find that once a post makes it to the sidebar as a popular post, it continues to receive more 'clicks'.  

Besides the previously mentioned GeneaLeaks, other posts with recent popularity include Applying SWOT Analysis To Your Genealogy Research and Building My 2011 Research Template.  I will be interested in seeing how 2011 stats pan out.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and commented on my blog posts. May you all have a productive research year in 2011!

Analyzing Blogger Stats

The information provided by Blogger's Stats over this past month has been pretty interesting to analyze.


My most popular post this month was my review of the Flip-Pal scanner.  Not surprisingly, this scanner has become my favorite new genealogy toy.  I'm sure that this post has been one of the more popular because of my posting a link on Twitter.  Using Twitter to post about blog posts has increased some traffic to the blog.


It would also appear that by using the widget for "Popular Posts" has allowed some of those posts to have even more page views.  In other words, the popular posts end up becoming more popular.


Some of the search terms and links that have caused people to land at my blog are pretty interesting as well:

Most of the referrals have come from Google, but Facebook and Geneabloggers are well represented.


One of the more interesting search terms was "suicide daughter married james dwiggins"!  Why didn't this person contact me?  This sounds like a great mystery.  I'm not aware of any suicides involving the Dwiggins family in my research.  Two searchers were looking for "Dr. Chew Salamonia Indiana" - my ancestor.  Who were you?  You didn't leave any comments.  


I'm glad that I've added this feature to my blog, and I've turned off my own tracking, so in the future this will be even more accurate.  I'm glad to see that links to my Facebook profile and occasional tweets have also brought visitors to check out my blog.

My New Avatar

I had no idea that my new avatar would garner such a positive response.  I was getting tired of the same old photograph on my blog, my Facebook and Twitter pages, and decided to do something different. . On Twitter, @maineroots and @A_CAIN were quick to comment on my new avatar, including the nice mutton chops!

The photograph is of my paternal 3rd-great grandfather, Dr. Ezekiel Cooper CHEW (1822-1888), one of my more intriguing ancestors.  A medical doctor, he also practiced law and lived in Darke County, Ohio and Jay and St. Joseph County, Indiana.  He managed to have three wives and 16 children, which I'm still working on tracking down. I like this photograph because he looks a bit like my dad.


The avatar was taken from a photograph that currently hangs at the Marshall County Historical Society Museum in Plymouth, Indiana.  A fellow researcher was nice enough to snap a picture for me several years ago.  One of my goals is to make a trip there to see what other CHEW family information they might have.

© 2010, copyright Travis J. LeMaster http://tjlgenes.blogspot.com

I Tweeted For The First Time

I took an historic step today and "tweeted" for the first time today.

I finally signed up for Twitter and you can find me @tjlgenes. So far, all I've managed to do is to open my account, add some friends who were in my contact list to follow, and join the Genealogy Surnames Group at Twitter.

My first "tweet" was pretty simple and straightforward:

I just joined the Genealogy Surnames Twitter Group http://tgr.me/g/surnames so stop by and see us. #surnames

Not much to shout about, but it is a start. I'm hoping that I can learn how to use the service to connect with others who are researching my surnames. Plus, I can always follow the tweets of my favorite geneabloggers and other celebrities.

I hope to use Twitter on Surname Saturday as well as use the #genealogy hashmark to reach other searchers.

Hopefully it will be as much fun to meet new researchers as Facebook has been....