Intriguing

This is not a blog that gets thousands of hits every day - for that, I suppose, I'd have to be writing about sex or celebrity....or probably both. But I'm always intrigued by where the people who do land on the site each day come from - and why.

Sometimes it's quite easy to use the stats provided by my tracker to unearth who's surfed in from where and why.

Recently I've been researching and writing material on the Apollo 1 fire - I've been talking to a few astronauts and others involved around the Cape and Houston at the time and, by looking at both the location of those viewing the blog, and also where they've been referred from, it's clear to see they were checking out the writer who, in turn, was checking out their opinions and memories. So, a nice circle completed there.

I've just started on a project now about Chuck Yeager as next year's the 60th anniversary of his flight in the X-1 rocket plane that first broke through the sound barrier in level flight (actually he was climbing at the time, making the feat even more memorable). I'm starting to contact people involved in the X-plane project, and hope they'll stop by to check out progress via this blog.

As for other visitors, some get referred from where I appear in other people's blogs - I've noticed quite a few people jumping over from Ron Shewchuck's pages and from one or two of the other PR blogs. And, for a brief moment when I was picked up by Shel Holz and Neville Hobson, a few people came in on the back of their podcast. Well, I hope I can reciprocate as there's little value in any kind of social media community where contributors merely drone along alone.

By far the biggest category of visitor is those who surf in off a google search or something similar, spend a few seconds realising that this is very much a niche site, and move right along. Well, thank you for visiting, and I'm sorry this isn't your cup of tea!

But those that really intrigue me are the lurkers, who arrive in from points unknown; spend a long time working through the pages - and sometimes even email links on to other people. Who are you guys from the Philippines, Slovakia and the US - or even who was it from London who spent almost an hour on the site a couple of days ago? Did you find what you were looking for and was it any use?

I'm curiously curious about you silent types!