Someone at the White House is a
regular reader of Legal Schnauzer
Every now and then an acquaintance will ask me, "Roger, what kind of influence does your blog have? Do people really pay attention to it, beyond maybe a few folks here in Alabama?"
If that's the kind of queries I get from people who are more or less friends, you can only imagine the stuff I hear from enemies. That usually comes in the form of anonymous comments that go something like this: "Schnauzer, nobody reads your pathetic excuse for a blog, and nobody cares what you think. You're just a loser--in court and in life--so why don't you get a job?"
Trying to quantify the influence or impact of a blog is an inexact science. The Web features all sorts of "analytics" services that provide data about number of visitors, page views, and such. I've written before about that kind of data and what it says about Legal Schnauzer. But that still doesn't go to impact or influence or the kinds of people you are reaching. The biggest question perhaps is this: Who is your audience?
I can't answer that question with precision, but I do know our little blog reaches some influential places, including the White House--the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. And that's not all; we have visitors almost every day from dozens of law firms, government agencies (uscourts.gov, doj.gov, etc.), universities and other institutions, mainstream media outlets, the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and so on.
But my favorite has to be when we get a visit from "Executive Office of the President," with the location of "Washington, D.C." And I would say we've had 15 to 20 visits from them in the time Barack Obama has been in office--and they seem to be drawn by all sorts of topics.
Our most recent visit came earlier this week, and it was the result of a keyword search for "karen johnson lobbyist rove." We try not to toot our own horn around here too much. But when a little braggadocio is called for, I like to pull out my "Executive Office of the President" file. Here is the latest entry. I get a kick out of showing it off:
Visitor Analysis & System Spec
Search Referral: www.google.com — karen johnson lobbyist rove #2
Host Name: Browser: Chrome 22.0
IP Address: 198.137.240.197 — [Label IP Address]
Operating System: Win7
Location: Washington, District Of Columbia, United States
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Returning Visits: 0
Javascript: Enabled
Visit Length: Not Applicable
ISP: Executive Office Of The President
Navigation Path
Date Time WebPage
www.google.com — karen johnson lobbyist rove #2
22 Oct - 08:24:21 - legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2012/07/karl-rove-and-karen- johnson-political.html