What people are searching for

There are several fun tools that you can play with to discover who is coming to your blog and how they are getting there.  If you look at the Feedjit gadget in the side bar, you can click on real time and see where people are visiting from.  If they clicked from another site, it will tell you.  If they got here from Google with a search, it will tell me what they searched for.  Google analytics does the same thing but it compiles the information over time. 
The top searches are ones where people are clearly looking for me or for other foreign service related things:

1. Call me al foreign sevice blog
2. foreign service
3. alcaniglia.blogspot.com
4. call me al blog belize
5. al tikal

But in my view the most interesting things are the random searches that somehow got people to my blog.  Some of my favorites -

• "had to get" "glasses"
• a joke about looking in the mirror
• americans acting like children
• belmopan friends with benefit (this may be my favorite)
• call me electronica
• december is that you can call me january
• does christian bale play poker in las vegas on new years
• how to do with diversity in my addiction
• how do you call ambassador's wife
• i'm a foreign service officer belize belmopan
• similarities between beer pong and bowling

I can also see where people are at when they read my blog (or at least where their IP says they are).
By far, most of my readers come from the US (over 75%).  I have had visitors from 48 of 50 states (what, you too good for me South Dakota and Vermont).  The highest concentration is in Virginia, then California (thanks Bob), New York, Arizona, Nebraska, Florida and Texas.  In the world, Guatemala, Belize, UK, and Japan, Mexico, Brazil, France, India, and Canada round out my top 10.  Overall, 92 countries have visited.

Analytics will also tell me what my most popular posts are.  By far, is my Flag Day post with almost 1400 hits (about 25% of my total traffic).  A very distant second place goes to the Ultimate Road Trip, (about 150 total hits) where I dreamed about my unfulfilled plans to road trip from DC to Belize.  That is closely followed by Crap I've bought for Belize, Chetumal, Packout and Beyond, and How I got here.