When statistics go bad or Who are you and why are you looking at my blog?

As part of its user settings Blogger provides the user with an array of information about one's blog: number of visits per posting, recommending sites, how people arrive at your blog, etc. Among these details are two pieces of information that I find intriguing, one because it's useless and another because it's vexing.

First, one of the details they provide is what software one's readers are using to look at your site. Now for big time bloggers I suppose that it might be helpful to know what platforms people are using so that you can modify the content to maximize its appearance on that software. But for your average blogger like me it is a useless bit of information, though I admit to being a bit curious as to who it is that uses Linux.

But the other detail is much more tantalizing to me: blogger tells me where (as in what country) people are accessing the blog. Most of this info I find easily explicable. Obviously most of our hits come from the US. Second, not surprisingly, is Honduras. So far so good. Third place goes to Russia. Here I get confused. I have been to Russia but exactly none of the people I met there would care (or be able to) to read this blog. My only conclusion is that the hits come from a former student who spent the semester in Lithuania. THAT might show up as Russia, right?

Fourth place goes to Swaziland. I know that you're thinking that seems more unlikely than Russia, but as it turns out I know that another former student is spending a year working there. Makes sense.

Fifth is Belgium. This is a problem. It is a problem because it means that my sister who lives there is not reading the blog very faithfully. She really should be ahead of Russia and Swaziland.

The next five go like this: Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic and France. Each of these has multiple hits and I can't explain any of them. For my sister's sake I hope it means that her internet service provider is periodically assigning her foreign IP addresses. Sounds like something the EU would do. (Though even if I add all those hits to the Belgium count, she still lags behind Russia).

Otherwise...Who are you people and why are you reading this blog?