Where are all these eyeballs coming from?

I've been on Blogger, a Google company, since I started FWIW in 2006.

Yeah, I know, Google doesn't usually keep products alive for 20 years, but (knock wood) Blogger has been an exception.

Blogger didn't always track page views. I spent a good chunk of the day trying to track down when Blogger began counting page views on FWIW. Yes, I realize I'm the only one who cares.

I could not track the exact date down. Google was counting pages by 2015, obviously, when I reported that I'd reached 1,000,000 page views. Before Google undertook this task, I used a product called Sitemeter. While flailing around my self-dug rabbit hole this afternoon and evening, I confirmed that I was still relying on Sitemeter in 2011.

What got me started on this was the length of time it took to reach each million-page-view milestone. I laid all this out in my post about my six millionth page view... just this past January. At the time, I was pretty geeked because I'd gone from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 page views in only about 292 days... under 10 months.

But... if you look at the screenshot I took off my site dashboard early this afternoon, I had over 7.76 million page views here. In not even six months, I've gone from 6,000,000 to shouting distance of 8,000,000.

It strikes me that there aren't that many people interested in Cook County judicial elections and social gatherings for the local bench and bar. Even if they visit often. Really often.

In fact, my best guess is that FWIW blew past the 7,000,000 page view mark some time in May. It's not like I was putting up all my Pulitzer-ready material in May; actually, I spent a good chunk of that month at Northwestern Hospital (thank you, I'm doing much better lately).

And how the heck did I get 47,315 page views on Friday?

Obviously, I'd like to believe that these page counts are 100% accurate... but... even if they are, I can't imagine that all these views come from people who are actually interested in the content I present on FWIW.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that traffic is up. Moreover, when I look at the page views on specific posts, I am gratified to note that the four posts I put up in 2017 proposing that Illinois move to a zero-based discovery system in civil cases, have attracted a lot of attention of late. All four posts are generating roughly equal traffic; that means people are reading each post in the series.

If you're interested, here's the series:

• Reforming civil discovery – Part 1 – the problem of human nature;
• Reforming civil discovery – Part 2 – preserve the civil justice system by adopting zero-based discovery;
• Reforming civil discovery – Part 3 – how zero-based discovery can work; and
• Reforming civil discovery – Part 4 – one more post on zero-based discovery.

I reread these posts recently. I stand by them; I think they're still timely. Maybe some of the recent readers of these posts will agree. Hopefully, some of these may be in a position to implement these proposals. I can dream, can't I?