I saw that someone did a search for "Thoughts from the Shower" by Dave Chung on Google to get here yesterday, which was my newspaper column two years ago at USC. Whoever you were (it was a new visitor), hope you found what you were looking for... a handful of "ok" writing with great illustrations by my then-artist Liz Belfer.

Anyways, it inspired me to do my monthly traffic post, so let's go!

Basic Traffic Stats

August 2007
Total Visits: 7,098
Total Unique Visitors: 6,394 (woo hoo, a few more people came back than last month. Thanks everyone!)
Page Views: 9,651
Average Page Views Per Visitor: 1.35 (poop, went down)
Average Time on Site: 3 minutes (also went down)
Bounce Rate: 75.05%
New Visits: 89.39%

July 2007
Total Visits: 4,602
Total Unique Visitors: 3,819
Page Views: 6,685
Average Page Views Per Visitor: 1.45
Average Time on Site: 4 minutes and 44 seconds
Bounce Rate: 75.99%
New Visits: 82.31%

Visits, uniques, and page views continued seeing pretty big growth this month, but didn't double like it did last month (got pretty close! But I suppose to scale, it's tougher as more people get here). I kept people captive on the site for less time on average than I did last month, but also attracted a higher percentage of new visitors. Really, the stat I'm most interested in is seeing that it looks like more people might be coming to the page consistently every month, which is really encouraging. Thanks to everyone who visits!

Top Traffic Sources

August 2007
Google Image Search: 39.21% (People love pictures!)
Google Search: 26.77%
Direct Traffic: 5.34%
Google Image Search - Canada: 4.16%
Blogger: 3.21%

July 2007
Google Image Search: 28.81%
Google Search: 14.78%
Direct Traffic: 10.97%
Blogger: 8.6%
Boxxet: 7.93%

So the search engines were good to me in August, but let's attribute that to "beef curtains." It will be affectionately referred to as the August 2007 "Beef Curtains Bump," as my website somehow became an authority on "beef curtains," always a dream of mine.

Top Searches to Get Here

August 2007
1. Lauren Conrad nickname
2. Lauren Conrad beef curtains
3. Lauren Conrad's nickname
4. Why do they call Lauren Conrad beef curtains?
5. Spencer Pratt official website

July 2007
1. Brent Wuchae (track coach who married student)
2. Roisin Isner
3. Cody Paul Los Alamitos (the little, incredible football player who was featured on MySpaceTV)
4. Dave Chung
5. Carrie Underwood

The "beef curtains bump," believe it. It's a real phenomenon.

Gracias por todo!

As always, thank you all for your support! You guys make me feel like the prettiest girl at the ball.

And for no reason at all, other than it being 5:26 in the morning, I'll post this video of Carrie Underwood singing Heart's "Alone," just because it's my favorite performance in the history of American Idol.