Year of the (not so) Nearly Blog - Month Foxtrot

I'm keeping the slight title change from last month. The reason being that the Wikio rankings lifted to number 4 Lib Dem last month.

Considering February has three days less than January I'm quite happy about stats. Last month I had 3,816 absolute unique visitors up from 3,753 in December up 2.5%. They made 5,623 (5,419) visits +3.8% and 6,980 (6,798) page views +2.7%. All of which are new records for this blog. My busiest day was the 15th February although both the 14th and 24th were just behind. The 24th was when for some reason google images in Australia started to hit my number one blog of the month.

But that's enough of the procrastinating on with what you're all waiting for my top 11s* for January.

Top referring sites were:

1. (1) Google Organic
2. (2) Direct Hits
3. (5) SNP Tactical Voting
4. (3) Lib Dem Blogs
5. (9) Facebook
6. (-) images.google.com.au
7. (6) Lib Dem Voice
8. (7) Twitter
9. (4) Iain Dale
10. (-) images.google.com
11. (11) Google Referral

I wrote 102 new contributions to the blog down from last months exceptionally busy 153 but exactly the same umber as in December. The 11 stories that you've been reading most (by direct page views) are:

1. Chinese Deathly Whispers (for the first time being top on a month)
2. Kung Hei Fat Choy 2010
3. Further in the Nicola Sturgeon Situation
4. Comedian Jason Wood Dies Aged 38
5. ***BREAKING*** Only MP with Two Premiership Teams Steps Aside
6. Standing Down and Defection
7. So Tory Bear Describe a Typical Paedophile
8. Where's the Reader's Digest Prize Draw When They Need it
9. Green Blogger Joins Lib Dems
10. SNP Glasgow Counciller Defects to the Lib Dems
11. Future Freefall for All #LabourSlogan

Where did you all come from? There were ten less territories than January with only 72.

1. (1) United Kingdom
2. (2) USA
3. (5) Australia
4. (3) Canada
5. (4) Ireland
6. (7) Germany
7. (10) Philipines
8. (6) France
9. (8) Netherlands
10. (-) Belgium
11. (-) Hong Kong

2009 The Stats

*


Well we are now in a new year and for all but the first few days of 2009 I was running Google Analytics on my blog. So how did I do last year.

I had 20, 508 Absolute Unique Visitors, making 34,608 visits and 41,132 page views. In the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging 2009-2010 I came 11th Scottish Blog, 11th Lib Dem and 101st Overall. I also had the honour of writting up the Scottish Blogging Year for publication.

My Wikio Rankings in their have shown a constant upwards trend but I wasn't tracking them the whole year. However I entered the top 100 political blogs in April and since then via Liberal England, Caron's Musings and myself I've been able to track the trend, mainly upwards since.

• March 149
  
• April 98
  
• May 71
  
• June 75
  
• July 73
  
• August 68
  
• September 52
  
• October 47
  
• November 34
• December 45

I wrote 803 Blogposts on this blog, 3 Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism pieces for Lib Dem Voice, 3 pieces on Slugger O'Toole and a guest post on Malc In the Burgh.

But of the 803 on this blog which are the most read. Trust me I'm as shock as you that there are two sets of equal placings over a twelve month period. As you will some but not all will have a banner shown they were featured elsewhere, which of course helped to boost some of their readership.

1. 25 Random Things About Me - This Meme went slightly viral on me hitting high in the google searches.
2. Chinese Deadly Whispers - A sleeper which actually is most often hit from google images.
3. BBC Fail to Answer My Concerns - About my complaint about lack of representation at Edinburgh Question Time when Jo Swinson was pulled at the last minute.
4. Oil Be There For You - Megrahi, Gadaffi, Brown, Salmond and black gold, Texas Tea, what really were the motivations.
5. = Kung Hei Fat Choy - My Chinese New Year message looking at failings on human rights on the year they promised change as a result of hosting the Olympics.
5.= Target Seats Were Based on Evidence at the Time Irfan - A little lesson in campaigning for Irfan Ahmed.
7.= Dunfermline Building Society: Need For Action - Following the failure of the Government to look after the banking sector the cry from the mutual for fairness in consideration.
7. = Why I Still Need to Go to Church - My personal Favourite blogpost of the year in light of the Scott Rennie and gay clergy in the Church of Scotland position.
9. No Matter What: Stephen Gately 1976-2009 - My tribute to Stephen Gately which grew through the day that his death was announced.
10. Campaign So 'Clean' that Chloe Smith's Job was Swept Under the Carpet - When the Conservative Candidate (now MP) for Norwich North by election called for a clean campaign she missed a spot.
11. Blogiquette 101: FAO Derek Draper - The founding editor of LabourList gets a tutorial in good blogging technique after he singularily fails to get it.

So those are the top of the year, but what about month by month. Here in Chronological order are the top 3 for each month. (Those not linked to are in the year's top 11 above)

January:

• Kung Hei Fat Choy
• Civil War in the BBC Newsroom - Or how to get around a reporting restriction
• Trumpgate Gang of Four - The emergence of a new grouping on Aberdeenshire council

February:

• 25 Random Things about Me
• Blogiquette 101: FAO Derek Draper
• Hung** by his Own Petard: RIP Derek Draper's Blogging Career - How the unbloggy high profile blogger imploded.

March

• Dunfermline Building Society: Need for Action
• I Skunnered (should be Skunnert) - My reaction to the action Scottish Executive took over three of Trumpgate four.
• Alternative View on Aberdeenshire - Pointing readers to other views on the above, well view of my now quite regular drinking partner Ruaraidh Dobson who called me dead wrong.

April

• Chinese Deadly Whispers (only took about 25% of its annual hits in month of publication)
• Piers Morgan is a Snob - Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan condemns the friendly town of Blackburn, West Lothian "a dump", I defend West Lothian's honour.
  
• Car Scrap Scheme Myth - Fisking the environmental outcome of Chancellors new big idea.

May

• Why I Still Need to Go to Church
• Chinese Deadly Whispers (still only another approx 25% this month
• Petition in Support of Scott Rennie - Does exactly what it says in the title, merely a signpost.

June

• Chinese Deadly Whispers (actually this blogpost's busiest month)
• Iain Dale's Hoisting by his Own Petard - Oh dear a Tory trying to attack on parachuting already selected candidates into by election seats.
  
• Sorry Irfan You've Just Lost All Respect - Throwing support behind another candidate not because of political beliefs but sharing your religion, our survey say uh-huh.

July

• Campaign so 'Clean' That Chloe Smith's Job Was Swept Under the Carpet
• Women Died for the Right to Make Their Own Decision - Yeah Irfan Ahmed failed to capture the point of universal sufferage.
  
• Chinese Deadly Whispers (fourth month in a row in the top three)

August

• Target Seats Were Based on Evidence at the Time Irfan
• Back to Simple Life: A Guide for Americans to Boycott Scotland - Tips on how the USA can iradicate the nasty Scots influence on their lifes post-Megrahi, stragely not taken onboard.
• Charlie Must Be Missing an Angel - Tribute to Farrah Fawcett

September

• Oil Be There For You
• Muggles are Following JK Fast - When Ms Rowling took up Twitter disciples swarmed to her at incredible rates.
• Body Found in Bathgate House - Breaking news of a murder just down the road from my flat.

October

• No Matter What: Stephen Gately 1976-2009
• Openly Homophobic Paper Fails Again - That "overtly gay" comment from Ephraim Hardcastle bout Iain Dale's candidature for the Bracknell open primary.
  
• Farewell Stephen Gately - My Tribute at the time of his funeral

November

• SNP Wants Scots to Waive Their Rights to Determine Their Future - Just what does the SNP referendum question actually say?
• Gay Youth Faces Death in Iran - The sad tale of Nemat Safavi and Irans ignoring treaties on treatment of juveniles.
  
• New Edict from Non-Scientific Home Office - Following the sacking of the drugs Tsar because science didn't reflect policy here are some new rules. After all nobody expects the Whitehall Inquisition.

December

• BBC Fails to Answer my Concerns
• My View on BBC Sportspersonality of the Year - My personal unbiased looked at the contenders acheivements and which truly was the most worthy.
• Blogging Bias in The Times of Ignorance of @JoanMcAlpine - More under-representation, of Lib Dems and lack of impartiality in the MSM.

It just remains for me to thank you all for coming and reading for yet another year. In fact you have come from 129 Countries

• 1. United Kingdom 74.35%
• 2. United States of America 12.45%
• 3. Canada 1.97%
• 4. Ireland 0.99%
• 5. Belgium 0.89%
• 6. Austrialia 0.83%
• 7. France 0.74%
• 8. Germany 0.72%
• 9. Netherlands 0.47%
• 10. Sweden 0.36%
• 11. Spain 0.35%

Which makes the rest of the world 5.88%.

So all of you from India, Italy, New Zealand, Kuwait Philippines, Norway, Singapore, Hungary, Poland, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Indonesia, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, United Arab Emirites, Thailand, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Greece, Portugal, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Israel, Denmark, China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Luxembourg, Isle of Man, Slovenia, Taiwan, Egypt, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Argentina, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Pakistan, Estonia, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Jersey, Bahrain, Austria Columbia, Peurto Rico, Trinidad and Tobaga, Nigeria, Venuzuela, Chile, Gibraltar, Peru, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Mauritius, Malta, Iceland, Serbia, Jamacia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Morrocco, Yemen, Bahamas, Georgia, Albania, Guernsey, Bangladesh, Grenada, Cyprus, Tunisia, Iran, El Salvador, Oman, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Panama, Maldives, Cayman Islands, Belize, Paraquay, Rwanda, Algeria, Ghana, Dominca, Moldova, Belarus, Guadalope, Monaco, Sudan, Liechtenstein, Lebanon, Bermuda, Mongolia, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Nicaragua, Laos, US Virgin Islands, Haiti, Iraq, Honduras, Namibia, Uruquay, Botswana or Martinique thank you very much for visiting.

My question now is how long before Andrew Reeves repeats this format?

* Trust me I don't believe this made the Daley Dozen either but it has, on the same line as Guido.
** I know this should be hoisted thanks to comments made.

Year of the Nearly Blog - Month Delta

Well it is the start of a new year, (the disputed) start of a new decade but of course it is that time of month where I get to reveal what has happened in December on my nearly blog. Compliment of the month came from Alex Wilcock who called me "the lovely Stephen Glenn" on Hogmanay. Iain Dale also managed to link to me five times this month. When after the first three I accused him of flirting with me he said "you wish", so no love bombing from the Tories top blogger then.

Because of my disastrous November my Wikio Political ranking dropped from 34 to 45, the possibility of climbing back into the top 40 as a result of my 103 blogposts last month may well come to be in the next week. But while we await Wikio with baited breathe on with what we do know.

Last month I had 2,667 absolute unique visitors down from 1,271 in October. They made 3,874 (2,024) visits and 4,627 (2,486) page views. So back up over 117% over the previous month but which was to be expected for a fortnight of turmoils and no weekend postings. My busiest day was the 7th December the day on the back of a second consecutive entry on Iain Dale's Daily Dozen.

[Compared to problem free October's 2,516 AUVs +6.81%, 3,863 visits +0.28%, 4,671 page views -0.94%]

But that's enough of the procrastinating on with what you're all waiting for my top 11s* for November.
Top referring sites were:

1. (-) Iain Dale
2. (1) Google
3. (2) Direct Hits
4. (3) Lib Dem Blogs
5. (8) SNP Tactical Voting
6. (5) Lib Dem Voice
7. (4) Twitter
8. (6) Blogger
9. (10) Google/referral
10.(-) Google.co.uk
11. (11) Planet Politics


I only wrote 103 new contributions to the blog way up from the 48 managed last month, and I was still shaking my head from when I realised that. The 11 stories that you've been reading most (by direct page views) are:

1. BBC Fail to Answer My Concerns
2. My View on Sports Personality of the Year
3. Blogging Bias of the Times or Ignorance of @JoanMcAlpine
4. Goodbye Mrs Robinson
5. There Have Been Too Many Goodbyes
6. Lib Dem Gain in Bearsden South
7. Sad, Yet IMHO, Wrong Move Charlotte
8. Wave That Flooded Glasgow #TheWave
9. I'm a Bit Disappointed with Nick Clegg
10. Letter to My Sixteen Year Old Self
11. Price of Twelve Days of Christmas Shows Modest Increase


Where did you all come from? Well again you remained at around the 60 countries up from 59. I feel I may be doing a comparison of the full countries at some point. So in order, and no surprises at the top.

1. (1) United Kingdom
2. (2) USA
3. (3) Canada
4. (5) France
5. (4) Ireland
6. (8) Australia
7. (11) Germany
8. (-) Hungary
9. (43 =) Spain
10. = (16=) Belgium
10. = (7) India

* Hey you must know the score by now, eleven all the way.

Year of the Nearly Blog Month Bravo

So I climbed into the top 50 of the Wikio Political blogs at the start of month alpha as a nearly blog, will my elevenses and 101 in the Total Politics Polls. Even Andrew Reeves said 'don't encourage' me. So does that climb make be less of a nearly blog? Well there are still 46 blogs ahead of me.

Last month I had 2,516 absolute unique visitors up from 2,326 in September. They made 3,863 visits and 4,671 page views. So a 10% boost for the nearly blog's confidence. My busiest day was the 17th October the day of Stephen Gately's funeral when Jan Moir's dispicable article also dominated.

My top 11* referring sites were (not counting direct hits so 1 & 3-12):

1. (1) Google/organic
2. (2) Lib Dem Blogs
3. (3) Twitter
4. (5) Lib Dem Voice
5. (8) Malc in the Burgh
6. (4) SNP Tactical Voting
7. (7) Iain Dale
8. (12) blogger.com
9. (11) Britblogs.co.uk
10 (17) Planet Politics
11. (29) Andrew's Running Blog

I wrote 77 Blog entries last month but you visited 237 of them. The 11 stories that you've been reading most (by direct page views) are:

1. No Matter What: Stephen Gately 1976-2009
2. Openly Homophobic Paper Fails Again
3. Farewell Stephen Gately
4. Swine Flu Hits Linlithgow Academy
5. Even PCCy are Making Jan Moir a Special Case
6. Stephen Gately: The Heart of the Tragedy
7. The Hardest Work Lacking Feeling: Jan Moir Speaks Again
8. Epic Fail by Carter-Ruck #carterruck #trafigura
9. When Parliamentary Reporting is Gagged in the 21st Century #Trafigura #CarterRuck #Fail
10. Wikio MacBlogopshere Rankings October
11. = Golf Week Says Trump Not Playing the Game
11. = Jewish Letter to Cameron

I guess that list shows what dominated the month as far as my readers were concerned.


Where did you all come from? Here's the top countries from the 60 that visited this month, down from 70 in September.

1. (1) United Kingdom
2. (2) USA
3. (7) Ireland
4. () Netherlands
5. (4) Canada
6. (8) Germany
7. (6) Australia
8. (3) Belgium
9. (5) France
10. = (9) India
10.= (23) Spain

* Hey 11 is the new 10, even Charlotte Gore tried to usurp the Stephen Glenn position in last month's wikio rankings.

Year of the Nearly Blog Month Alpha

As you can tell from my stats I am the nearly blog of Political Blogging. Having come 11th in both the Lib Dem and Scottish lists in the Total Politics Guide and 101st overall. How can one blog come so close, so often, so what does a nearly blog do? I noticed that Iain Dale cried out for all of us to use our google analytics to report back on each month. So I've decided to start keeping track.

Last month I had 2,380 absolute unique visitors up from 1,479 in August. They made 3,495 visits and 4,126 page views. So a 63% boost for the nearly blog's confidence. My busiest day was the 7th September when Lib Dem Voice, Iain Dale and Yahoo News all picked up my top story.

My top 11* referring sites were (not counting direct hits so 2-12):

• 1. (10) Google
• 2. (1) Lib Dem Blogs
• 3. (3) Twitter
• 4. (5) SNP Tactical Voting
• 5. (6) Lib Dem Voice
• 6. (-) news.yahoo.com
• 7. (2) Iain Dale
• 8. (7) Malc in the Burgh
• 9. (-) Tory Bear
• 10. (4) Scottish Unionist
• 11. (16) britishblogs.co.uk

The 11 stories that you've been reading most (by direct page views) are:

• 1. Oil be There For You
• 2. Muggles are Following JK Fast
• 3. Body Found in Bathgate House
• 4. Fibbing Tory Bear's in the Hood Today
• 5. Men have Eating Disorders Too
• 6. One Foot in Brown's Grave
• 7. I Think Tory Bear Owes me and Apology
• 8. Evolution of Devolution #ldconf
• 9. Oh What a Rally #ldconf
• 10. Pendle One to Go it Alone
• 11. Eric Joyce's Resignation Letter

Where did you all come from? Here's the top countries from the 70 that visited this month, up from 40 in August.

• 1. (1) United Kingdom
• 2. (2) USA
• 3. (3) Belgium
• 4. (4) Canada
• 5. (6=) France
• 6. (8) Australia
• 7. (5) Ireland
• 8. (13) Germany
• 9. (-)India
• 10. (23) Philipines
• 11= (9) Sweden
• 11= (6=) Italy

As I'm also currently doing quarterly stats for work don't be surprised if later in the day I publish how I did in the third quarter of 2009 as well.

* Hey I'm going to be using 11 a lot this year get used to it.

Ryan's Stats with Caveats

Ryan Cullen this morning published a look at the clicks out of the fabulous LibDemBlogs. It was inspired by the recent navel gazing following the June Wikio rankings coming out. However he did post some important caveats.

There are some major caveats in the stats:

a) these are clicks from LibDemBlogs.co.uk, this doesn’t include people who use the RSS feed, those who have sites in their own RSS feed readers/aggregators, sites which are accessed via bookmarks or those linked from other bloggers.
b) I only checked the “top” 50 blogs, as the current method needs me to enter each url in to the MyBlogLog one by one, and wait for the results. This means that a long tail blog could have been missed.
c) Those who post lots will have more clicks to their sites, this doesn’t mean that they are more popular.

So I got to thinking especially as I was quite shocked that my last appearance in the Golden Dozen was actually as one of the first seven on clicks through (I normally have to make the list through nomination). So I took a look at my blogs Google Analytics for sources.






You know I wasn't really surprised, it has been a while since every day LibDemBlogs and LDV dominate my statporn. As you can see LDBs is between about 12-15% indeed for the year so far it accounts for 13.3% of my hits, add on LBV at around the 6% mark and less than 1 in 5 of my hits from the big two central Lib Dem sources. As you can see in May I have a big bump from Google, I actually featured on their news feeds on a number of days that month. The same has happened on MSN and Yahoo News feeds in the past.



Over the last two weeks I've also had a lot of hits coming through Google Images, this is solely down to a good choice in the hours after Michael Jackson died and actually being a more influential global source than the source I lifted it from. My readership is definitely not solely or even largely Lib Dems that is a good realm of influence. So while it is good to get plaudits from inside the party that isn't the be all and end all, nor the main reason why I blog.

Update: Of course no sooner do I post this than a mention on Iain Dale's Daley Dozen shifts things dramatically overnight.

Wikio Breakthrough

Of course this blog occasionally does statporn* but this month I've scaled a new height. If you look at the Wikio rankings on the left hand side of the screen you will see they are both in double figures. Yes I'm a new entry into Wikio top 100 blogs of all categories. I've managed to climb 51 spots on that chart and climbs 13 spots in the politics rankings to a new high of 67.



Scarily after praising the other Lib Dems especially the ladies last month for their efforts I find I'm up there with Mr Quist for the biggest Lib Dem climber in the hot 100 this month.



*To be perfectly honest I think all bloggers do just some prefer to do it in a darkened room while their partner is out of the house.

Let's Hear It for the Lib Dem Ladies

The latest Wikio lists are out and some of the biggest climbers are Lib Dem Ladies.

Charlotte Gore climbs 23 to 55 and Alix Mortimer shots up 16 to 44. Jenny Rigg also goes up 7 to almost tickle James Graham in the back at 49 and Caron debuts at 97.

Not to be out done Mr Costigan Quist soars into the top 70 up 22 to 69.

The full Lib Dem listings in the top 100.

8. Lib Dem Voice +1
31. Peter Black AM -4
44. People's Republic of Mortimer +16 2008 Lib Dem Blogger of the Year
zooming past the 2007 recipient
47. Quaequem Blog -8
49. Yorkshire Gob +7
55. Charlotte Gore +23
69. Himmelgarden Cafe +22
80. Stephen's Linlithgow Journal +4
89. Liberal Bureaucracy +3 (not sure what gender to count the Lady Mark)
97. Caron's Musings NE

James Graham wrote about the Blokeosphere yesterday. By my reckoning, claiming the Lady Mark's masculinity and discounting LDV, that is 5-4 just to the Lib Dem men and a pretty good case of Gender Balance for the Lib Dem bloggosphere.

Statporn an Upward Trend

Surely I've crossed the line too far to say "This site doesn't do statporn but if it did..." however was quite impressed earlier that the first week of February is only really outstriped by 4 of the last 12 months and almost on a power with Sep and Nov. Not a bad seven days, and we all know that's a long time in politics.

Top of the Pops for 25 Reasons

Do a search in Google for "25 random things about me" go on, you will, you will, you will.

This meme is a worldwide phenonum there are over 14.9 million page returns. That is actually 10 times more than yesterday evening when I started to contemplate writing this thing up. And what is that sat at the top of the heap. Only little old me, no wonder my stat porn is through the roof and staying there.

So as some of the other MSM are looking, and even doing their own lists of 25 here are 25 11, for the moment at least, interesting ones that I have found out there. These are in no particular order just ones that caught my fancy.

25 Random Things about my 49ers Fandom in the week after Superbowl why not have a look at 25 things that make you a fan.

25 Things About Being Gay on Facebook an interesting reply back at the trend from a Gay Magazine. Though there are some of the things in this list that even heterosexual Facebook users can relate to.

25 Randy, er Random Things about Jack Humphrey I'm not sure how common the thought is but I'm sure several people have send a private 25 Randy Things list off. To be honest I did and got a return.

25 Random Things About Corey J Feldman who as he says on his Twitter is no the 80's teen actor.

25 Random Things About Tom Harris MP 26 if you add the fact that Tom apparently doesn't know how to make a note on Facebook, maybe he should ask Uber Labour 2.0 John "I didn't use to do t'internet" Prescott

Who has done one as well.

25 Random Things About Queer Musings as the blogs name reflects this is very intorspecitive

25 Freaking Random Things About me that are going around in my head

25 Random Things on You Tube yeah people are Vlogging it as well.


25 Random Things From the Korean American Christian Media.

25 Random and Personal Things About John Taylor

Stat Porn Craziness

The normal run of events for those times when you take downtime to recharge your batteries your hits should drop off. In my case the recent lightness of posting is down to an intense weekend of blogging the Scottish Roundup and having deep discussions of a personal nature (occassionally both concurrently).

However, my stat porn has not been affected by blogging light, indeed it is up. The reason is my 25 Random Things About Me. Off all the lists of 25 things across the interwebby mine is ranked on the front page of google. Heaven knows how.

Anyhoo Jimmy* (the elephant in the room) is going to be discussed tonight, so my mind may be clear to resume normal blog activities.

*Yes we have named it for speed of typing purposes. How sad is that?

Wierd Search Results Week 51 2008

I've decided to each Friday post some of the wierdest ways people surf through to my blog. It started as an idea when someone in Las Vagas came on by using the search word "gambling vanity" so I thought well that location is appropriate. Though heaven knows what they found out about the SNP during Glenrothes.

Mind you yahoo do think that I've written "homourous poems about the credit crunch" as my Twelve Days was in their first 10 hits. Next years Fringe here I come.

I also always wonder when somebody looks for a variation of my name and interesting additions just what, who and why they were looking for "steven glen and the petroleum". I hope that Dane found what and who they were after and that it didn't prove to be their link to nowhere.

Double Take on the Graphs

I know I was blogging light last week what with a busy Monday and days off on Thursday and Friday so I didn't expect to see much traffic when I hit the stat meters today. I looked at the graphs for weekly traffic this morning in disbelief as even I recalled not being that bad when I last checked on Wednesday.

Then I realised that the daily chart was measuring in ks rather than hundreds. Gulped on my tea to realise that Wednesday produced 1,314 unique visitors. Sadly as I tweeted on the day most of these seemed to have come from Yahoo news sites and not LDV so I may not make the Golden Dozen on merit. But it appears that both China and Gordon Brown helped soar this blog to its biggest day in history to equal measure.

It was also the first time that visits from the USA surpassed those from the UK when I hadn't been posting about the Presidential Election. So maybe there is hope for the US if they are concerned about international events.