Tagged: blogging stats
The Best and Worst of 2012
It’s been one heck of a year for me, that’s for sure. Not only did I read and review 260 books, I’ve made so many new friends and discovered so many great new authors I never would have found otherwise. When I first started my blog, my personal life was chaotic but the daily posting regime has helped me with time management and increased my sense of responsibility. It’s also made me realize that I absolutely love blogging and will likely be here this time next year. After all, I have to finish my own reading challenge, don’t I?
Since this is a recap of the entire year, I’m not only going to do my best and worst posts in terms of traffic, but also the most commented, most liked and the ones I think are my best work. Well, here we go:
The 5 Best Posts (Traffic)
1. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (2, 615 hits)
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome (2, 467 hits)
3. Matilda by Roald Dahl (2, 025 hits)
4. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1, 701 hits)
5. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1, 414 hits)
Now, for me this is not all that surprising. I’ve consistently had search engine traffic for each post and most posts are older posts, which gave an advantage over the other posts that are just now gaining speed.
The Best and Worst of November
It’s already December, so let’s take a look back and reflect on November, shall we? For starters, I just want to say that overall traffic is down this month, likely due to the travelling madness Thanksgiving causes in Americans. (How dare you people want to spend time with your family!) However, the good news is that in October I had 5, 421 views while in November it was only slightly down at 5, 346. Not that bad, considering. So what articles were the most popular in November? Let’s take a look:
1. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
5. Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz
If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, you’re absolutely right. A quick look back at October shows that all 5 articles that were at the top then are still at the top now. The only difference is the order. So what about the bottom articles?
1. The Historian by Elisabeth Kostova
3. The Horus Road by Pauline Gedge
4. The Necromancer by Michael Scott
Once again you’ll notice that the bottom 5 are rarely consistent. Not one of these articles I listed above has made an appearance on the worst 5 before. The only really surprising things are that The Necromancer and Uglies are part of the 5 ‘worst.’ I guess Michael Scott isn’t as popular now that his series ended and Uglies is an older YA book. Maybe the current generation will discover it like I did.
That’s how my November went. How was yours?
The Best and Worst of October
Well it hasn’t exactly been a record-smashing month like September was, but in comparing it to my normal stats, everything is up since August. In October I received 5,421 views, as compared to 4,846 in August. That’s not bad because I’m only around 1,500 views down from September, which more than makes up the difference Anne Rice’s publicity gave me. Now let’s look at which articles received the most traffic, shall we?
2. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
5. Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz
Okay, I completely understand the first four being on the list. I mean, most of my traffic is from search engines and looking at the search terms makes me suspect it’s mostly kids doing homework for novel study. But what is with Ark Angel‘s sudden appearance? There seems to be a resurgence in the now finished Alex Rider series, although I’ll likely never know why. But why Ark Angel in particular? It’s the sixth of nine books.
I’ll be puzzling over that for a while, so let’s take a look at the five worst articles in October.
1. Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
2. YA News and Upcoming Releases
3. The Iron Legends by Julie Kagawa
4. Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
5. Genghis: Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden
Okay, I can see ‘YA News and Upcoming Releases’ placing on here. I wrote it ages ago and those kinds of articles don’t age well. However, what is with Julie Kagawa’s Iron Legends anthology placing on the worst list? Has all the hype for it died down now that The Lost Prince has been released? Who knows? The good thing is that while the best articles seem to be consistent, the worst articles seem to rotate. Well, except for ‘YA News and Upcoming Releases’.
So how was October for everyone? Stats-wise and life-wise.
The Best and Worst of September
Well folks, it’s October already. September went fast, especially since many of my previous stat records have been smashed. My old record for views in one day was 305, but now it’s 861. Why? Anne Rice herself linked to my review of Pandora on her Facebook page and her Twitter account. I suspect it will be a while before I break that record, so let’s look at what articles gathered the most hits in September:
3. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
5. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
Pandora‘s rise to #2 isn’t all that surprising because of the extra publicity it gathered. What is surprising is that Matilda is now the top article. Most of my traffic for the day comes from Matilda, which makes me suspect people are either revisiting their childhood or teachers are doing novel studies way earlier than they did when I was little. Of course the bottom three are related to your typical novel studies both in Canada and the U.S.
So we know what the top articles were, but which articles did the worst in September?
3. Fly Away Home by Maggie Myklebust
4. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
5. What’s New in the World of Books?
The bottom books aren’t really that surprising, but what’s interesting to me is how they keep changing from month to month. It seems like no article/review is consistently bad, which is nice. The book reviews on the bottom 5 aren’t surprising because they are either obscure or were once popular, but the hype died down. The articles aren’t surprising either because ‘My Favourite Heroines’ isn’t exactly the best article I’ve written and ‘What’s New in the World of Books?’ was a current events article.
In September, I also broke my record for views in one month, which was 4, 846. It is now 6, 927. The publicity from Anne Rice sure helped with that, but I’ve noticed that now I’m getting more views on the average day than I used to, which is how things should be as I get more content up.
So how was September for you guys?