Pigs, Spies and Statistics

As the end of the year is coming closer, we decided to take a look at the statistics of our blog. Let's start with the pageviews.

On a typical day in december, we got between 200 and 500 pageviews. Before December, we had between 50 and 250 pageviews. As you can see, the traffic to our blog has been rising steadily, with drops when you all go on holiday, and rises in between the holidays. You can also see that December is a bit unusual. In 2012, on average, we had about 3,000 pageviews a month (in 2011 this was about 2,000, so hurray!). But not this December, where we had a whopping 8,000+ pageviews. Although we like to think we are pretty awesome, we suspect that this is mainly due to the increased attention from spammers (which is no fun, especially when you’re a pig..). We now delete quite a lot of spam on a daily basis. So take the rest of this post with a grain of salt. We like overviews but we cannot say for sure how reliable they are. If we suspect messy results because of the spam, we’ll add an *

Most Popular Posts

1. Friday Video: Wink (2,305 views)*
2. Internet memes: LOLpigz (1,989 views)
3. Friday Video: Mouse for Sale (1,043 views)
4. Who should we donate the calendar proceeds (912 views)
5. Friday Video: Talking Guinea Pig Babies (611 views)*
6. The Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar (491 views)
7. Dealing with Bloat (477 views, from 2010)
8. A Surprise for us all (441 views)
9. Can we eat Chinese Leaf? (277 views, from 2011)
10. Guinygirlz DIY cage (231 views, from 2011)

So, what do we get from this? What we really liked was the response we got when it was time to vote for the calendar. We love it when the guinea pig community gets together to help shelters. Makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. We can also see that you seem to like the Friday Video’s, so we'll keep that up (although I wouldn’t bet any money on the Wink Friday Video, since that one in particular got a lot of spam comments). What also surprised us, is the number of page views from the relatively old bloat-post. It is making us wonder if we should put up more health and DYI posts so that people can look up stuff.

Spies
As undercover pigs, we do like to know who the pigs are that are visiting our blog. Since us editor-piggies met on the GPDD, we already know we are quite an international bunch.

So how do you guys get here? As far as we can tell, you Google us, or type in the web adress directly in the browser or have our blog bookmarked. We also get a lot of traffic from Twitter and the Guinea Pig forum.

When visitors enter our blog because of their search terms, they typically do this with the following search terms:

1.    undercover guinea pigs (177x)
2.    funny guinea pigs (89x)
3.    funny guinea pigs (81x)
4.    FUNNY GUINEA PIGS (76x)
5.    guinea pig funny (47x)
6.    funny guinea pig pictures (36x)
7.    guinea pig hay rack ides (32x)
8.    sleeping guinea pigs (26x)
9.    guinea pig hay rack (24x)
10.    guinea pig bloat (20x)

Who knew? Google thinks we’re funny.

Boring stuff

Back in 2008 when we started our blog (well actually, restarted), Internet Explorer was by far the most popular browser among our visitors. In 2012, Firefox is on top of the list (36%). Followed by Internet Explorer (29%), Chrome (14%) and Safari (12%). Also, mobile use of the blog has risen (not that much, but compared to nothing just a short while ago, it is a lot more (4% is about 3,700 pageviews). You can also see that when you look at the operating system stats.

Even though Windows is still the most popular operating system. A huge chunk of it’s competition is taken by the iPhones and the Androids. Why is this interesting? Well, this way we know that when we put something on the blog, it would be nice if it works on smartphones too.

Personal favorites
Most of you visit this blog frequently and then read the most recent posts. We are really happy with these type of visits, but it also means that we cannot see which posts you liked most since those visits add to the general stats (don’t feel bad, we don’t mind ;-) ). Also, numbers don’t equal a giggle or an ‘awww’.

We love sleeping.. err blogposts

That is why we wanted to highlight our favorite posts. For us, it were the blogposts that featured sleeping piggies both the Sleep Research and the Olympigs Fifty Yard Nap.

So.. which blogposts were your favorite?

Friday Video: Starcraft

A starcraft guinea pig parody




Have a nice Wheekend!

Friday Video: 12 Days of Christmas

Yes. We know it is not a friday, but it is Christmas, and with those 12 days, there must be a friday in there somewhere.



Merry Pigmas!

p.s. If you haven't checked the blog today, be sure to scroll down and check the lovely pigtures from agent Schilling

Merry Christmas from Agent Schilling!

Agent Schilling is happy to report she had a great Christmas!  She received a comfy cave to snuggle in, and a big stack of hay tubes just perfect for munching! 

Agent Schilling sends lots of love to all of her piggy friends around the world. 

Happy Holidays!

Merry Pigamus from Agents Butterloaf and Cannonball!

Season's Greetings from the Piggyfriends

Slave chose Susie and Sally aka Agents Gemini to pose 
for our holiday pigtures this year as she thought
that they would sit nicely and not run off across the room.
First of all she picked this one from the photoshoot.

Then she changed the scenery and tempted them to stay
 in place with a stocking full of delicious carrots. 

After a while even Sally and Susie's patience was exhausted
 and they trashed the set. Never mind.
They did get an extra carrot each for pigticipating.

Wishing everypig and every Slave a wonderful Yuletide, Christmas, Holiday, Hannukah or whatever you celebrate.

Glasses of carrot wine all round. Cheers.

From the Piggyfriends with Slave Penny - Nollag Shona. (Slave is Irish and knows all kinds of strange words and, in case you are wondering, this means Merry Christmas).

Vote for the Christmas Mouse - Puppy love jewelry

Our Guinea friend Puppy is taking part in a Christmas mouse voting again this year,

with all his guinea pig pals dressing up for christmas. You can also follow him (@puppyaguineapig) and his friends: @HoodwintheGpig, @Gideon_Shmeegle, @DobbieJonesGpig, @GabrielleGPig
on twitter

You can vote for him, or any of the other gorgeous piggies here
(or copy paste this link: http://stores.ebay.com/Puppy-Love-Jewelry/Vote-for-The-2012-Christmas-Mouse.html)

Friday Video; Talking Guinea Pig Babies

Thes little monsters are so cute..


Have a nice Wheekend!

All we want for christmas..

is foooood!!!

hugs,

The starving winky team

p.s. J, if you're reading this, yes this is a hint to get off the couch and into the fridge!

p.p.s. a clean cage wouldn't hurt either..

When Pigs Fly & Calendar orders

We know we have seen this shop somewhere before,
but just wanted to share, they have supercute christmas art now!

When pigs fly on etsy

---

I received the first prints of both desk and wall calendar yesterday and they are both supercute!
I have changed/added the holiday dates you sugested, and added last agent names, I am now ready to order the calendars for you!
I also wanted to let you know you can still order the undercover guinea pigs 2013 Calendar by going to the order calendar tab at the top of this page.
Today I have send out payment requests to everyone who ordered a calendar so far!
Please let me know if you want faster of slower shipping, I indicated the prices of that between brackets. If available slower takes 21 days, faster takes 7 days. Or is something else is not correct.

Wheekz to all piggies out there,
Mieke of the Undercover guinea pigs blog.

p.s. You can still enter the space hopper competition to donate 1 pound to the Potters Guinea Pig Rescue, and a chance for you guinea pig to be a character in Jane Bartholemew's new book!
See the info in the side bar -->

Friday Video: Wink

We do not particularly find this video funny, but hey..  it's a commercial with guinea pigs in it.


Have a nice Wheekend!

p.s. thanx to Vegan Wheekers for tweeting the video

The Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013 is ready to be ordered!!

Hi piggy lovers,

I am proud to announce we have finished up the design of the Undercover Guinea pigs Calendar 2013!

A few points of attention:

• The calendar starts the week on mondays, not on sundays as some people are used to. I mailed the printer, but this cannot be changed. 
• This year I found out I can change the standard Dutch holiday names, so I will add all the holidays I have on another English calendar, and translate but leave some of the Dutch holidays in. 
• The Wall calendar sometimes has more than one pigture on the month, because that enabled us to also put lower resolution pigtures in the calendar. The desktop version has one pigture per month. 

Prices
12,50 euro (around 16 USD) for the desk calendar
15 - max 20 euros for the wall calendar (it actually costs almost 20 euros, but the company usually gives discounts)
plus postage and package (from the Netherlands, Europe or the USA for our friends there)

All people who ordered so far have received an email from Mieke, to check of their order is correct, and upcoming week payment requests will be sent using paypal.

Ordering the calendar
Have you not ordered the calendar yet? You still can! There is no set deadline for ordering the calendar, but do keep in mind it will take a few days to weeks for you to receive the calendar.You can choose a wall or desktop version, or buy both, and buy as many as you like.Order the calendar from the order calendar tab above, or visit our order form.

Support a guinea pig shelter
With buying this calendar you will not only get a Desk/wall calendar featuring some of our agents, but you will also support a Guinea pig shelter, which will be chosen through voting on the blog!

Nominate a shelter
You can still nominate a shelter, by commenting on this post, and do tell us why you think they deserve our donation!

Previews
Please notice that we have changed the first pigture to Fugly and his romaine hat!

Desktop version of the Calendar
(click to enlarge)

Wall version of the Calendar (click to enlarge)

Thanks for everyone supplying their gorgeous piggy pics, and everyone ordering a calendar, thus making it possible for us to do the Calendar and donation again this year!

Wheekz,
Mieke

Friday Video: Mouse for Sale

We love this cute video. Just watch it.


''Mouse for sale'' - animated short film from Wouter Bongaerts on Vimeo.

Have a nice Wheekend!

Calendar Photo

Agent Shyness here with a pigture of me for Fourth of July!

  Agent Shyness out

A Pigture for 2013 Calendar

Agent Shyness (Larry)when reporting with a  Christmas photo of us with Santa!

   Did he know he used to wear a green suit?

  Agent Shyness and Agent Pellets out

Picture for 2013 Guinea Pig Agents Calendar

This is Agent Pellets (Mo) reporting.Here's a picture of me and Agent Shyness (Larry) when we were 6 months old.We're ten months now.

  Do you think we could be in the calendar?

   Agent Pellets and Agent Shyness out

Calendar 2013: Another Cute contest

Hi guys,

Again we received some pretty pigtures to use for the calendar, and we can't choose which one we like better!! So help is needed, which one do you like best, A or B?

For the month of March we have Diarmuid celebrating Saint Patrick's day (March 17) and Agent wizard celebrating Easter at the end of March

A. Diarmuid
(due to lower resolution Diarmuid, can only be combined with Gandalf on the wall calendar...)

B. Agent Wizard (Gandalf)

p.s. We could still use one or 2 more pigtures for the 2013 Calendar, so all you gorgeous Agents, put your slave to work!

Friday Video: two Hamsters

What happens when you give two hamsters just one wheel:


Have a nice Wheekend!

p.s. we recommend that you keep hamsters just by themselves (no matter what the pet shop says) they are not herd animals like us guinea pigs.

Introducing Agent Schilling!

Real Name?  Fergie
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Schilling.  My dad named me this after Curt Schilling, a famous baseball pitcher, because I am great at throwing things!  Mostly I just throw my poop over the edge of the cage to get my humans' attention, but sometimes I throw other things, too.  Piles of hay, pellets….my entire pellet bowl.  Throwing things is fun!
Where do you live?  I live in California with my 2 piggy slaves and 2 piggy sisters, Agent Peanut and Agent Kelly.  
Favourite Food?  I only eat healthy food – I can be kind of a snob.  I love my KMS pellets and fresh hay, along with various lettuce types.  But don't stick junk food in my face like apples or fruit – no way! 
Favourite Hobby?  I like to harass my sisters and throw poop.  Sometimes mom calls me an "angry little nugget" when I harass my sisters or give my slaves The Stink Eye. 
Favourite Toy?  Poop?  I sure do love to throw that stuff!  Mom says this is not a good habit for a princess like me to have, but I just can't help myself!

Introducing Agent Kelly!

Real Name?  Wendy
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Kelly, which is short for Machine Gun Kelly.  I LOVE to machine gun rumble around the cage and act angry!
Where do you live?  I live in California with 2 piggy slaves and my 2 piggy sisters, Agent Peanut and Agent Schilling. 
Favourite Food?  I like to eat lots of fresh hay and I sneak Oxbow vitamins as often as I can.  Crunchy food is the best, I don't really like soft stuff like red leaf lettuce. 
Favourite Hobby?  Rumbling!
Favourite Toy?  I love my hay tube.  I carry it around the cage and snuggle with it, and I even use it as a pillow.   Fresh hay tubes are the best. 

Introducing Agent Peanut!

Real Name?  Jaina (pronounced Jay-nuh; I am named after a beautiful princess in World of Warcraft!)
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Peanut, thanks to my colors and how cute and little I am….er, was, once upon a time, before all this extra chub showed up!
Where do you live?  I live with 2 piggy slaves and 2 piggy sisters (Agent Schilling and Agent Kelly) in California. 
Favourite Food?  What food isn't good food?!  I love pellets, fresh hay, lettuce, carrots, and especially fresh peppers from the garden.  I will eat anything…I especially love when my mom lets me sneak a piece of apple or lets me lick banana off her fingers – YUM!
Favourite Hobby?  Sleeping and looking cute. 
Favourite Toy?  My cuddle cups.  They are comfy to sleep in, and fun to hide under!

More pigtures needed!

Hi all,

As you probably know we are working on compiling a calendar of some of our agent piggies, which we will be selling. The small profit we will make with this, will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world ;)

So far we got one nomination for a Guinea pig shelter:
- Wind Whistle Warren in Gloucestershire, UK (nominated by Elizabeth)
Of course we wouldn't mind more nominees, so send in the shelter names you think we should donate to

The Calendar is half filled, 6 months covered, 6 more to go, so we need more pigtures, and we are sure you all have some gorgeous piggies that would love to make the calendar at home!

As I know not all of you have cameras that take pigtures that are of a high resolution, and got some lower resolution pigtures send in, I decided to allow two lower quality pigtures for the wall calendar. I think it would be a shame if we cannot let everyone enter, due to low resolution pigtures the printer wont accept! So be informed that in the wall calendar you might find 2 pigtures on one month.
The desk calendar is smaller and this usually fits one lower res pigture, plus it's too small to show two pigtures on one month, so on that one you will see only one pigture per month.

Here are the entries so far:

I have mailed all the people that ordered a calendar so far, if you have ordered but did not get an email, let me know!

Mieke of the Undercover guinea pigs blog

Friday Video: How to make an apple pie

Since it is getting colder outside, something warm out of the oven would be really nice. The Gekke Flappies sent us this video on how to make an apple pie. Yum!



Have a nice Wheekend!!

p.s. the Burrow Bunch has made lots of video's starring Petal and Roket. We really like the cute sets and the clever way they are making pigs 'do' stuff. Make sure you check them out on their website or their Youtube channel

Happy Peegsgiving!

Happy Peegsgiving from Agents Cannonball and Butterloaf!

Birthday pig & Make your own paper guinea pig

 Hi all,

Today Agent Tortoise celebrates her first birthday!

Roos as a baby

Roos, last April, she's the second heaviest now!

She wants to have a small (virtual) party, and as she is only one year old, we found this fun thing to do together with your slave!

Our friend Dobby the Capybara posted this on twitter.
We haven't tried it out yet, but it looks interesting!
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/3157/guinea-pig/index.html

Here's a direct link to the pattern:
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/3157/guinea-pig/downloads/guinea-pig_p_ms.pdf
And the assembly instructions:
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/3157/guinea-pig/downloads/guinea-pig_i_en.pdf

Lazy Sunday

We were hanging out on the couch this sunday afternoon and pigtures were taken..

Sjeuf loves laptime

Snacks while watching tv

Pretty Bo

P.s. Bo has cateracts in both her eyes. That is why they are blue. She is a bit young to get these, but otherwise fine

Cute Contest: Bond Girls

As you all know, we are busy collecting pigtures for our calendar. And we need your opinion. The Cali Cavy Collective has graciously consented to let use use one of their pigtures and now we're in trouble because they are all so cute. So we decided to settle this with a cute contest.

We have currently narrowed our selection down to these two pigtures. (check out the original blogpost to see more of these cute bond girls)

Pigture A: Poof

Pigture B: Abby-Roo

Which pigture would you like to see on the calendar?

November 2012 UCGP calendar piggy

Hi there,

I would like to share with you this months calendar piggy, agent Curly, aka Fuzzypeg of the piggyfriends. 

He is one of the gorgeous piggies that featured in this year's undercover guinea pigs (UCGP) calendar. With the making and selling of the UCGP calendar 2012, we made a little profit, that was donated to a piggy shelter. We plan on doing this again for the upcoming year, and we need your help with that!
First of all we like to recieve pigtures of you so we can fill up the calendar.
Read more about sending in your pigture here
Secondly we need people who want to buy the calendar, to adore the piggies standing on their desk, or posing on their wall ;)
When you already know you want to order the UCGP calendar 2013, you can do so by filling in this form, or have a look at the order calendar 2013 tab. Once we got the calendar complete and ready to be printed, you will recieve a request for payment from Mieke, using PayPal.

We hope you will help us out to make this a success again this year!

P.s. don't forget to enter our first competition... more info here

Friday Video: the Bachelorguinette

We LOVE this Friday Video!



Well.. except for Sjeuf, he claims that he is much handsomer than all those bald, tall, tiny-bottomed bachelors ;-)

Have a nice wheekend!

Cute Contest: Snuggly Igor

Inspired by the humans in the US, we've come up with a new format. It's called a Cute Contest and it basically works like this; we post 2 pigtures and you decide which one is cuter.

We really like the photo's of uncle Igor, so we thought this would be a good excuse to dig up some of his pigtures out of the archives.

Pigture A

Pigtures B

Which one is cuter? A or B?

Friday Video: G-Force Challenge

The videos from the last 2 weeks were the result from this G-Force Challenge



Have a nice Wheekend!

Friday Video: Guinew Moon

Since it was Halloween this week, we've hunted down the Guinew Moon spoof for you guys on youtube. Enjoy!


Have a nice Wheekend!

Contribute calender

Hi,

This is our pigture. We love to relax :-)

Jimmy and Pepper

Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013!

Hi Piggies,

Like last year we want to make an Undercover guinea pigs calendar!!

How does it work?

We have 12 spots, one for every month, to fill the calendar, and we might also want a piggy to go on the front. We would like to receive pigtures of your cavy or cavies, which we can use in the calendar with your permission.

If we recieve too many different entries, we might have to choose. Sorry there are only 12 spots to fill, but we will give priority to piggies that have not appeared in the calendar last year (or actually if one piggy of a slave has been in there already and he/she sends in a pigture of a different piggy he/she owns, and we also received a pigture from a cavy who's slave hasn't had a piggy in the calendar before, the last one will get priority).

We will also ask you to nominate a shelter where we will send the money we make on the calendar. Once all calendars are (almost) sold, we will have a vote for which shelter which should recieve the money.Everyone can send in nominees, this is not restricted to piggies featuring in the calendar!

The shelter that won last year, will be excluded, as we want to give all shelters a chance.

Mieke from the undercover guinea pigs blog will post when you can order the calendar (desk or wall version) from a company and have the company send it to you directly (as it's probably cheaper and faster).

So, send in your entries! It can be one of or all your piggies, and we love big, good resolution pigtures for the calendar, themed pictures eg Christmas, Halloween etc are also good. You can send in pigtures with a little accompanying text about the piggie(s) and their agents names, either to the blog directly (see the contribute tab) or mail it to us and we will post.

The undercover guinea pigs blog girls,
Mieke, M and Janneke

Agent Pellets (Aka Mo,Momo or the Mowhauk dude) and Agent Shyness (Aka Larry,Lar,or the Curly Furry) fight about who's cuter.

Hey guys! Sorry,I haven't posted in awhile.It's really busy here.Well,here's a (funny) (kinda)video of them.

   Bella and the Piggies

 
Ps , they are on the floor infront of the couch!

Friday Video: Guinygirlz new cage

Hi there,

 Auntie J is away and left us to the hard task of selecting a video.
We have had a new cage, build by our human Daddy E, for a while now. We are pretty sure we shared it already but we cannot find it on this blog...
So hope we are not annoying you with a repeat of this video of us entering the new cage for the first time... it is quite a long video, you don't have to watch it all if you don't want to ;)

 

 Some specifics:
- The cage is about 122cm by 125cm (around 48" by 49") and made out of wood, the kind that consists of layers pressed together with a shiny top and bottom.
- The see-through parts are pieces of plexiglass (hooby glass) from our old cage (see our old cage here)
- Roos has a perfect camouflage color for the sides of the cage (the wood is red brown, like Roos is).
- The back has a small ledge at the top, which can be opened, so our waterbottle and hayrack can be filled more easily. We like this, because it gives some idea of shelter when we get scared.
- The cage is on top of an 'H'-shaped stand which holds our boxes of pellets, hay, bedding.
- We had to get used to the wide open space, but now We looove the new cage!

 The Guinygirlz: Woopy, Lily, Daisy and Roos

pigture of Mimi for Undercover piggies

Agent A would like to add her entry to the 50 yard nap. This is the aftermath of her 5th adoption day celebration! ~Jaime, Mimi & Captain Phil the betta fish~ ~Missing Albert, Molly, Radar & Daisy~ http://s652.photobucket.com/albums/uu246/chirpy123/ http://www.etsy.com/shop/AintThatCrafty

Friday Video: Secret Agent Bond

The name is Guinea. Guinea Bond



Have a nice Wheekend!

#Olympigs 50 Yard Nap Agents Jaws and Snowflake