A graph of traffic to this site by month, starting in April 2009. I switched domains from greenletters.wordpress.com to brandonsmith.com in late October, which seems to have helped marginally. The monthly peak was November, with 456 hits.

Was reviewing the statistics on this site today, and thought I’d quickly share my findings with you.

• While “smokestacks” is the search term that’s brought the most viewers to my site, “springerlies” is a close second. Who would have thought I’d have the number four Google spot for the name of the cookie my grandmother makes? (I wrote them into a menu of mine.)
• My theory that this domain would launch me out of the sea of other Brandon Smiths (all likely great guys, of course) has been proven correct in a couple ways. Yesterday’s post featured a woman who found me more or less by accident. And if you Google “Brandon Smith Chicago” (with or without the quotes) you find my ChicagoNow profile and two links to this website in the top 10.

• Also if you search “Brandon Smith” “Columbia College”, the top four results are me. If you omit the quotes I have the top result and 3 more in the top 10.
• Switching from braggy to honest mode, my highest number of views per week is 204, which occurred in September. Obviously I’m not making money off the site. One time a couple years back, on a blog I dismantled, I had 1,200 views in two days. How? The Gmail blog linked to my analysis of the presidential candidates’ reading lists.
• I do, however, see a noticeable increase in traffic when I post as opposed to when I don’t. Who would have thought? Last week, for example, traffic increased 35.63 percent above average levels.
• Aside from the About the Author page (which blows the rest out of the water with 370 hits, not including my own) the most-hit page is “Published!,” about breaking my long investigation of pollution near Dayton, Ohio. The next most popular post is one in a series of poem posts I’ve since removed en masse from the blog proper, because I figured they might scare away employers. However, here’s the link for you, devout reader. Next in line you have “Restaurant Dreams,” the post I linked to earlier with the Springerlies. I’d say this is mostly because I keep referring people there personally.
• A couple more recent heavy-hitters are “Lutz race proves CTS-V,” about GM’s president challenging foreign car enthusiasts to race him (and losing); and “Bobby Kennedy Jr. liveblog transcript,” which explains itself.