Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Willey House

I use Google Analytics and StatCounter to track visits to RobertBallHughes.com. I can track the number of Visitors and what country and city they are in, among many other things.

I can see the Search keywords that where used to find the site and repeat the Search. This helps me to know what Visitors are interested in. I can also see the Traffic Sources including Search Engines and Referring Sites.

One recent referral site was the Library of America’s StoryOfTheWeek.loa.org which posted an article about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 story: The Ambitious Quest, about the Willey Tragedy. There is a link on that page to The Willey House page on RobertBallHughes.com.

After the article was posted, visits to the site increased from an average of about 10 per day to about 90 on Jan. 8th and have continued to be about twice as high as normal for the last 10 days.

Shortly after this article appeared, Letters from a Hill Farm posted the article: Short Stories on Wednesdays - The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne, based on the Library of America’s Story of the Week. It also includes a link to The Willey House on RobertballHughes.com.

I’m very flattered (and humbled) about the referrals and grateful for them. I hope that Visitors will find the information interesting and helpful.

David Brown