Tagged: stats
The 2015 Annual WordPress Report
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 62,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The Best and Worst of March 2015
I don’t know about you guys, but March just flew by for me. We’ve been having beautiful weather here in general although we’re currently experiencing a bit of a snowstorm. But then it’s supposed to be nice again by the end of next week, so I can’t really complain. Things are generally going well for me and I’m super excited about Game of Thrones Season 5 premiering next Sunday (because I totally haven’t mentioned that before).
Stats-wise March was okay. I received a total of 5,708 views with 3,549 of those being unique views. That’s up from 5,169 views in February so things are looking up. I expect as soon as Game of Thrones begins to get more hits than usual because of my SEO-heavy article (completely by accident, I assure you). And here in April I’m hoping to do another Game of Thrones article as well as another Forgotten Figures article. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done articles on either topic but I feel I’m ready to sink my teeth into both fantasy and history once more.
So what were some of the best articles this month?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. The Mad Reviewer is Open to Review Requests (Temporarily)
5. Why no Writer Wants to Tackle Chronic Pain
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you! I can’t believe that the Game of Thrones article was once again #1. But in all seriousness, I’m really not all that surprised with the top 5 articles this month. I’m getting lots of links from class wiki pages on my Hunger Games article and my speed reading article has always been popular because it’s something a lot of people aspire to. Maybe next month a new article will actually appear in the top 5.
What were the worst posts this month?
1. The Return of the Weird Search Terms
2. Discussion: Blogging Pet Peeves
3. Sins of the Lost by Linda Poitevin
4. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Meh. Once again there are no real surprises here. My reviews of Crashed and The Historian have appeared on the 5 worst list before and I’m sure they’ll appear on here again eventually. They’re just not all that popular in terms of search engine traffic. Which is fine because they’re definitely balanced out by the insane amount of search engine traffic I’m still getting on my usual top 3 posts. As I’ve said before, they’re all pretty good books. They’re just not that popular.
Well, that pretty much sums up my March. How was yours? Which articles of yours get the most search engine traffic?
The Best and Worst of May 2014
May was both a month of sorrow and a month of joy for me. My boss, mentor and role model passed away after his third battle with cancer this month. I’m still grieving for him but things are slowly getting back to normal as I’m trying to move on. Other than that, May was a pretty good month. The weather was so nice that today I finally got the garden in and I broke yet another monthly stats record.
This month I welcomed 51 new followers but also smashed April’s monthly views record, which was 11,905 views. In May I received 13,316 views, which includes 9,771 unique views. I’d say 3 months of breaking my monthly view records is a pretty good trend. But enough of my rambling. What were the most popular articles in May?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. End of Days by Eric Walters
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Meh, nothing new or unexpected here. The only really notable thing was that of my 13,316 views, 8,515 of them were on my Game of Thrones article (or about 64% of my total traffic). That’s up from the 58% of my total views last month! I guess as the season 4 finale draws nearer, more people are searching for Game of Thrones. It’s quite a lucrative thing to write about, statistics-wise.
So what were the worst articles this month?
1. Awful Egyptians by Terry Deary
2. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
3. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
5. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
As with the five best articles of the month, there’s really nothing new or remarkable here. The books are either older books or books that really weren’t that popular to begin with. No, it seems like Game of Thrones reigns supreme online lately. That’s a good thing for people like me who go off on a tangent and defend the both the TV series and the books.
So how was your May? See anything here that surprised you about my statistics? Are you a fellow Game of Thrones fan too?
The Best and Worst of March 2014
It’s been one heck of a month here at The Mad Reviewer. For 30 days straight I’ve had over 200 views per day, a personal record. Which also means that I beat my previous page views per month record of 8,228 in January 2014! The final tally is 8,941 views in all of March, which shatters the previous record. Far more important to me are the 58 new followers I gained during this traffic surge. That brings the total number of followers of this blog to 788, meaning that if my traffic stays high I’ll be having a very special 1,000 follower giveaway soon!
When I looked at the 5 best posts this month I had to laugh. Before I explain, here they are:
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
5. Some Thoughts About Book Blogging & Statistics
I honestly had to laugh at the Game of Thrones rant article being number one because it was number one by such a large margin. Of the 8,876 views I received this month 2,962 views were from that article alone. That’s insane and hilarious! I guess it might have something to do with the fact Game of Thrones Season 4 premieres on April 6 (yay!). The other ones are pretty easy to guess why they’re #1. They’re all popular books, articles kids use for school or semi-controversial ones that garnered lots of comments.
Okay, so which articles were the worst during this record-breaking month?
1. Emperor: The Death of Kings by Conn Iggulden
2. Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey
3. Desired by Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs
4. Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer
5. Lost in Shadow by Cynthia Luhrs
As usual I’m not too concerned about these reviews being the lowest ranked in terms of hits. They’re all either older books or books that aren’t exactly the most popular, even if they were excellent. Next month we’ll see different books on the bottom 5 and life will go on. It’s just interesting to see how the ‘worst’ posts rotate every month.
Discussion: Being Open About Blogging Statistics
As you guys have obviously realized, I’m very open about my blogging statistics. I’ve been doing my monthly “The Best and Worst of…” series since September 2012, about 9 months after I first started blogging. I don’t think statistics are something to brag about or be embarrassed about. They simply are. Why I publicize them is mostly because I like to analyze them and hear other people’s thoughts and commentary on said analysis. It’s nice to share ideas about why some posts are more popular than others or why my views spike/drop in a particular month.
Another reason is because when I started blogging I was looking into what book blogging statistics typically looked like and came up with zero information. I want to help new bloggers have some more realistic expectations about how many hits they’re going to get in the beginning as well as how their monthly stats aren’t going to grow at a consistent rate.
With that said, not every blogger is as open about their statistics. Some are even more open about their statistics and go so far as to do fancy pie charts and graphs about their traffic. It all seems to come down to the individual, which makes sense. Some people like me are a little bit more focused on their stats than others. At the same time, there are people who don’t care about their stats at all. Neither approach is better than the other; they’re simply different.
What I want to know now is: Are you, as a blogger, open about your stats? Why or why not? Do you enjoy it when bloggers share their stats or do you think it’s more of a bragging thing? And, do you think bloggers in general should be more open about their stats?