On this day, the feast of St. Coca of Kilcock, two years ago, this blog was started. The first anniversary post gave the following statistics: "4 contributers have published 100 posts. 12,092 visits have been made to the blog by 7,099 unique visitors." Over the past year, 10 contributers have published a further 161 posts. A further 29,192 visits have been made by 18,816 unique visitors. That is, a total of 38,837 visits in the past two years.
Of the 500 most recent visitors, we have been privileged to welcome 24.80% from the United States, 23.40% from Ireland, 22.00% from the United Kingdom (including the North of Ireland, according to our statistics provider), 7.80% from Canada, 3.20% from France and 2.40% from both Australia and Italy. The latter has included visitors from the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, the General House of the Dominican Fathers, and the Pontifical North American College. To our one visitor from the Vatican among those 500 most recent we say 'God bless Your Holiness!'
If you break that down by region, Dublin topped the chart with 9.2%, Kildare was next with 7.8%, Ontario visits accounted for 4.6% and Belfast featured 4.4%, just above London at 4%, after which Illinois visited 3%, California 2.2% and Texas 1.8%, the same as Lazio (excluding the Vatican).
The top three downloads were two pictures of the Mass in Carlow Cathedral, followed by the map of the River Lee. The favourite exit links were those relating to Latin Mass Statistics, the Traditional Roman Missal and The Standing Stone.
New Liturgical Movement, The Hermenutic of Continuity, Forest Murmers and Britcat were the source of a great number of the most recent guests. The most popular search words among those 500 most recent searchers were: "senan's holy well," "innisleena abbey" and "cronody." Nobody won the sweep on that one! Google (.co.uk, .ie, .com, .com.au, .fr, .it, .nl, .lk, .lu, .be and others) was once again the favourite search engine by 98.20%.
Our two associated blogs had reached 36,470 (http://www.fsspvocations.blogspot.com/) and 177,703 (http://www.tradvocations.blogspot.com/) by this morning.
St. Brigid, St. Conleth and St. Coca pray for the contributers, for the visitors and for the friends who showed them the way! May everything they publish and every internet visit they make redound to the Greater Glory of God, the honour of His Blessed Mother and the good of souls!