What people really care about

It’s the last day of September. I enjoy reviewing the statistics compiled by my blog’s supporting web site, on how many readers visited, which posts were popular, and what people searched for on Google and suchlike to bring them to my articles.

It keeps me humble – as if living with two teenagers and one young adult doesn’t already accomplish that goal.

In September, 331 searches came here looking for “Amanda Fritz” – presumably most of them after folks read my name in articles guessing who might run for City Council, and thought, “Who?”.

That’s nice. But 970 hits were searching for something like “duck cougar mascot fight”. The Mascot Fight photo was by far the most viewed single post in a month, since my blog started, with 1766 visits — not counting those of you who read my blog scrolling through all the articles and photographs.

The second most popular post in September was Steve’s Burning Man (maybe) Arson photograph, at 1259 visits. The highest count Portland post, on why public schools weren’t in the proposed VisionPDX, lagged way behind at 447.

On the positive side, interest in the Western Fence Lizard has greatly fallen off after the summer. That was topping Amanda Fritz in Google searches at the start of the month. Like I said, watching statistics can give a person perspective about her place in the universe – and I’d much rather be beaten out by the University of Oregon Duckie than by a blue-throated reptile.