… and I can catch my breath. What is it with me and the Dutch? I first noticed it when I was writing my triumphant announcement that I had solved my installation problem with the you-know-what-wireless-card and the you-know-what-operating-system, and wanted to acknowledge those most helpful in solving my problem – of the three, two were from the Netherlands. Next I had my tense, but civil, discourse with the owner of Virtual Identity – who turned out to be Dutch. It was through tracing him that I discovered that Gelderland was a real place – when I had heard Heath Ledger singing about it in “A Knight’s Tale“, I could have sworn that it was made up. Then I noticed that one of the few hits when Googling for “gregrperry” was a site that did nothing but log useragents, which had somehow picked up my customized useragent (yeah, that’s vanity, isn’t it?) I clicked the link to it in Google and was greeted with the phrases “Deze user-agent is nieuw, bedankt! User-agents die hier eerder waren:” When I clicked the “Translate to English” button on my Googlebar, I got garbage; probably because, like me, it thought the language was German. But driven by curiosity, I whoised the site and got an address in the now familiar Netherlands. “Ah-ha!” I said, “Does Babelfish have Dutch-to-English? Probably not.” But defiantly, it did. So I got a pretty clean translation, but the connection grew.

Then I get this comment, which leads to a blog post, from a guy who searched Google.nl using the terms “wordpress show current visitors and guest in sidebar“, where I was (at the time) fourth on the list of 13,700 results. I snidely remarked that one person commenting was a big deal, but he said he would tell his friends. This guy has plenty of friends. Here’s the locations of my non-bot, not-me visitors since his comment:

1 United States - Richmond, California
2 United States - Blacklick, Ohio
3 United States - Montgomery, Alabama
4 Netherlands - Amsterdam, Noord-Holland
5 Netherlands - Alkmaar, Noord-Holland
6 Netherlands - Vlaardingen, Zuid-Holland
7 Saudi Arabia - Riyadh, Ar Riyad
8 Saudi Arabia - Riyadh, Ar Riyad
9 Germany - Eppendorf, Hamburg
10 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht
11 Netherlands - Capelle Aan Den IJssel, Zuid-Hol...
12 Netherlands - Loet, Zuid-Holland
13 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht
14 United Kingdom - London, Lambeth
15 Netherlands - Zaanstad, Noord-Holland
16 Netherlands - Vlaardingen, Zuid-Holland
17 Hungary - Budapest
18 United States - Williamsburg, Virginia
19 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht
20 United States - Mifflin, Pennsylvania
21 Netherlands - Zaanstad, Noord-Holland
22 Netherlands - Etten, Noord-Brabant
23 Hungary - Szeged
24 South Africa - Lynnwood, Gauteng
25 Netherlands - Leidschendam, Zuid-Holland
26 Netherlands - Leersum, Utrecht
27 Netherlands - Vlaardingen, Zuid-Holland
28 Netherlands - Zaanstad, Noord-Holland
29 Netherlands - Wildervank, Groningen
30 Netherlands - Utrecht
31 Netherlands - Leersum, Utrecht
32 Andorra - Les Escaldes, Escaldes-Engordany
33 Netherlands - Capelle Aan Den IJssel, Zuid-Hol...
34 Netherlands - Tilburg, Noord-Brabant
35 Netherlands - Leersum, Utrecht
36 Netherlands - Alphen Aan Den Rijn, Zuid-Holland
37 United Kingdom - Shawford, Hampshire
38 United Kingdom - Marsden, Kirklees
39 Netherlands - The Hague, Zuid-Holland
40 Germany - Hamburg-Eimsbttel, Hamburg
41 United States - Wayland, Massachusetts
42 Germany - Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg
43 Netherlands - Opmeer, Noord-Holland
44 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht
45 United Kingdom - Leeds
46 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht
47 Netherlands - Achterste Hermalen, Noord-Brabant
48 Belgium - Gemeldorp, Oost-Vlaanderen
49 Spain - Pueblo Nuevo, Cataluna
50 Sweden - Sdertlje, Stockholms Lan
51 Netherlands - Opmeer, Noord-Holland
52 France - Paris, Ile-de-France
53 Netherlands - Montfoort, Utrecht

30 out of 53 visitors were from the Netherlands. WTF! That’s some traffic power.

Posted by Greg in My Website

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