500 and counting

Sandy Straits and Beyond celebrated his 500th blog by writing a retrospective this week. Coincidentally this is also my 500th blog and I'm also looking backwards.

My first blog was in April 2007. It was an experiment with a medium I wasn't familiar with and I wasn't sure I'd find enough to write about! But here I still am over five years later, still writing about amazing and interesting things in nature. It's been fun, the whole process, from deciding what the topic will be, sorting photos, finding references and the actual writing. And, of course, exploring the Australian bush. And I love reading the other Australian nature blogs.

I also wrote travel blogs when we holidayed overseas, and I've recently started one to write about another hobby of mine, family history. People often say that I must spend a lot of time blogging but I really don't. Maybe it shows! Mine isn't the most popular blog on the planet but there are a few regular followers - friends, family and fellow bloggers - and I'm continually amazed how often my visitors arrive because they've done a google search or image search. And I'm amazed that so many of my visitors are from overseas given that it's a blog about Australian nature. I hope they enjoy their visits and learn something about our wonderful country as well.

Here are a few of my blog's stats. I know. There are stats, and then there are stats. But this is what Mr Google thinks.

Five most visited blogs?
                           Round the twist
                           A bearded orchid
                           See through to the sea
                           Feather-heads and pussy tails
                           Point Addis
Five top keyword searches?
                            emu bush
                            orchid
                            cassytha
                            bush peas
                            thrip
Apart from Google and Blogger the top referring sites? Thank you guys.
                            fieldofscience
                            peonyden
                            snailseyeview
Top five countries of origin?
                            Australia
                            United States of America
                            Russia
                            United Kingdom
                            Germany

I wonder if I'll make it to 1000?