“The three most exciting sounds in the world: anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.” George Bailey – It’s a Wonderful Life
Almost exactly one month ago I was able to write a post that celebrated a statistical achievement when my companion blog ‘Age of Innocence’ hit the milestone of 400,000 hits and today I can post that my main blog site ‘Have Bag, will Travel’ has finally made it to the half a million mark! I would have got there a lot earlier if Google hadn’t changed their search engine algorithm in February 2013 which halved the number of page hits at a stroke because prior to this I was moving close to 15,000 hits a month but now wheeze along at about 5,000.
Thank you to anyone who has ever visited a page here.
As I said before I am not conceited enough to think that all of these are genuine visits and I am certain that a lot of web surfers will have found themselves on one of my one thousand, one hundred and twenty posts by mistake and wondered what on earth they were doing there.
To emphasise that I notice that the website http://www.webstatsdomain.org includes this rather flattering but wildly inaccurate assessment:
“Apetcher.wordpress.com is ranked 15 in the world (among the 30 million domains), a low rank means that this website gets lots of visitors. This site is estimated worth $38,018,523,303.”
Wow and if only!
I started the blog on 1st May 2009 when I finally abandoned blogger.com and moved to WordPress as, in my opinion, a far superior blogging platform.
My intention was to share my travel experiences. I had noticed that as I travelled more and more I was forgetting more and more so I began to keep a notebook with me and to write down all of the trivial things about my journeys and holidays; I had hoped that one day my children my discover the notes and find them interesting in the same way that ten years ago I took ownership of my dad’s notebooks and discovered his ordinary but interesting life.
A big thank you to anyone who has ever visited a page here.
To date the ten most visited posts are:
Norway, Haugesund and When Vikings Ruled The World
Sorrento, Mount Vesuvius – Living on the Edge of Disaster
Norway, Europe’s Most Expensive Country
Onyx UK and an Inappropriate Visit To The Moulin Rouge
Travel Tips For Beating Budget Airlines At Their Own Game
Spartacus, Freedom Fighter or Bandit?
I’ve certainly enjoyed reading about your travels. Congratulations!
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Thanks Gunta. Another especially fine sunset from you again this morning!
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Congratulations Andrew. I don’t often comment (serial lurker alert) but you are amazing and I hope you will keep travelling and inspiring all of us! Cheers!
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well done, I enjoy reading your travel diary, although don’t have time to come over more often…..
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Congratulations! With that many visitors, you could surely put some ads up and start earning some of that €38m.
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Thanks Richard.
I came across this interesting article earlier on best Christmas Markets & Birmingham is included! – http://travel.aol.co.uk/2013/11/12/worlds-best-christmas-markets/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cuk%7Cdl3%7Csec1_lnk1%26pLid%3D224302#!slide=aol_1248383
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Congrats Mister P, an inspiration to us newbies.
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Congratulations, as a newbie blogger I can’t ever imagine hits of that number! SD
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Thanks – you just have to keep working at it!
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Pula, Croatia – one of my favourites, of course! 😀
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This was the first place that I visited in Croatia. I liked it and I think it would make my top ten places to visit!
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Especially if you ventured a bit inland across Istria – truffle heaven! 😀 Amazing stuff – get some cheese with truffles there, some good wine and oh, it is heaven 😀
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I’m going to have to start running much faster if I ever hope to catch you up, Andrew 🙂 Post 299 went up today after 2 years and 2 months of blogging 🙂
Hooray for Birmingham Christmas market! Never been, but I might, one day.
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I find your posts really interesting. I would imagine you get many visitors 🙂
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You keep me on the edge of my seat especially when you’re driving in Italy, for example. 😀
I live vicariously through your stories of travel.
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Congratulations! An achievement to celebrate indeed!
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