As of last month, according to Netcraft, a UK-based company that provides “monthly Internet research reports on the hosting industry and specialises in phishing detection and countermeasures,” there are 107,400,000 active websites in the world. (There are more than three times as many hostnames.)
International Educator’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is 3,906,230.
Who Visits These Humble Pages?
Writing a blog is a solitary endeavor for most. Bloggers usually focus on topics they are passionate about and assume that someone, somewhere is reading. (In my case, given the language I write in and the issues I address, An International Educator in Vietnam is primarily for US higher education colleagues and others with an interest in Vietnam.) We sometimes wonder who is stopping by and get glimpses of that through web metrics (stats, web analytics), comments people leave and feedback through other channels.
Some people stumble upon my blog because of the search terms they enter, others are subscribed to it or click on links that appear on other sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, online articles I’ve written), while still others stop by for a visit because I send them a link. Interestingly, based on Internet averages, markashwill.wordpress.com is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 35-44, have children and are graduate school educated. (I’m not sure how the folks at Alexa collect this information…)
Top Search Queries
The top 10 search queries, according to Alexa, are as follows. (This is a list of the top search terms, both organic and paid, that lead traffic to the site.)
- “david shear” ambassador contact info (7.28%)
- california miramar university vietnam (4.26%)
- top 20 internet sites (3.30%)
- mark ashwill (3.22%)
- ambassador “david shear” (3.04%)
- ge training center (2.97%)
- ambassador “david shear” website (2.94%)
- ambassador “david shear” email (2.92%)
- “department of commerce” Indonesia Vietnam delegation (2.65%)
- vietstudies (2.60%)
Oh, by the way, did I mention David Shear? He’s the Ambassador-designate, whose relocation to Vietnam from Washington, D.C. was delayed when two US senators, Dick Lugar, Republican from Indiana, and Mark Rubio, Republican from Florida, blocked his nomination because of the adoption issue. Entering the search terms “David Shear Vietnam” into Google returned 1,500,000 results in .018 seconds. The second one is Obama Nominates David Shear to Become the Next US Ambassador to Vietnam, a blog post from 11 December 2010. This explains why so many people are coming here for information about Mr. Shear.
High Impact Search Queries
The “high impact search queries” are as follows. (This is a list of search phrases and sub-phrases that drive organic traffic to a website, sorted by their Impact Factor.)
- “global accreditation bureau” degree mill
- top 20 internet sites
- training center
- contact info
- father son holy spirit
- internet sites
- corllins university
Some Search Engine Terms from the Past Week
| tan tao university | |
| david shear vietnam | |
| central western university arlington tx | |
| china attitudes and perceptions of prospective international students | |
| irvine university vietnam | |
| thong tin ve visa sinh vien | |
| things are looking up in vietnam summer 2011 | |
| grants to study mekong delta vietnam summer 2011 university of houston | |
| economic instability in vietnam | |
| foreign school invests into vietnam recently | |
| invest vietnam education | |
| mark a ashwill | |
| vietabroader conference 2011 | |
| liberty aacsb candidates | |
| in which countries united business institutes degree valid |
An International Educator in Viet Nam 
Speaking of David Shear, check out this article entitled “Out of purgatory: Senate confirms multiple State Department officials”:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/03/out_of_purgatory_senate_confirms_multiple_state_department_officials
“David Shear is on his way to Vietnam to take up his post as ambassador there after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) lifted her hold, which she placed in order to pressure the State Department to act on Vietnamese adoption and custody problems.”
Or get it directly from the horse’s mouth – the US Senate website:
NOMINATIONS CONFIRMED (CIVILIAN)
August 02, 2011
PN64 * DEPARTMENT OF STATE
David Bruce Shear, of New York, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service,
Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of
the United States of America to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/one_item_and_teasers/nom_confc.htm
MAA