City Manager's Column:  Hey, Who Are You Guys?

 8-5-02

           The City launched this web site in August, one year ago. 

Since then, we have received daily, weekly, and monthly summaries of how people use our site.  These summaries don't tell us who you are, but they tell us what state or country you're from and the types of information on our site that you look at the most. 

Since last August, we've had a rather steady increase in the number of people who visit us each month.  Last month, we had over 2200 visits from people who cruise the Internet.  This month, the daily activity that we're seeing suggests that we might be reaching the "3000 visits per month" plateau. 

Most of the people who visit our site may not be from Iowa.  The statistics show that we have far more visitors from Virginia, New York, and California.  In June 2002, we were visited by people from 25 different states and 7 foreign countries. 

Our stats also show visits from France, the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, the UK, China, and India. 

After seeing these statistics, I am left with one friendly question:  "Who are you guys?"   

When we set up our web site, I had considered setting up a guest book section, but didn't.  

In lieu of that, I'd like to make an invitation:  

I'd like to request for anyone who is willing to please write to us at our email address of maqcityhall@caves.net and tell us what city, state, or country you're from and what led you to check out our web site. 

I will relay the responses that I get in next month's column. 

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More about our web site: 

According to our stats, about 80% of the visits to our site go only to our Home Page and for less than 1 minute.  I am assuming that people are stopping by to see if we have changed anything, then head out if they don't see something new.  

Concerning my earlier comment that most visitors to our site "may not be from Iowa," I was told by the company that owns the equipment where our site is perched that the stat for showing which state or country a visitor is from is really showing us the location of the Internet computer server that a visitor is using to reach us.     

For example, most of our visitors don’t use a local dial-up Internet service to reach us.  They use AOL.  I'm told that, if someone is in Iowa (for example) and uses AOL, they are using a server that may be located in Virginia.  Therefore, our web statistics will indicate that a person from Virginia was our visitor. 

The most viewed features of this site seem to be the sections on our Parks system and the City Calendar.  ("Rear in a Sling" is neither in our monthly top ten or bottom ten for site locations that people visit.)