Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Statistics for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

As I promised in Happy 9th birthday to the blog and Nowruz Mubarak (Happy Persian New Year) to my readers, it's time to review the statistics for the ninth year of this blog.

As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2020, this blog had a lifetime total of 2,484,920 page views, 4274 posts, and 3211 comments. Minus the lifetime total of 2,168,149 page views and 3853 posts at 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2019, 366 days earlier, the ninth year of the blog saw 316,771 page views on 421 posts during the ninth year of my writing it. In addition, both the blog and I counted 464 comments during the past year. While those are fewer page views on more posts than the 537,636 page views and 361 comments on 388 entries during 365 days for the eighth year of the blog, I set a monthly page view goal of 25,000, which means 300,000 total page views for the ninth year of the blog. I surpassed my monthly page view goal by 1397.6 and my annual page view goal by 16,771, so I consider the past year a success in terms of readership. Yay for realistic goals!

Follow over the jump for my analysis of the past year.

Even though I count the blogging year just ended as a success, I am still working harder for my page views than I have for years. Last year, I averaged 1386.66 page views per entry. This year it was 752.43, a drop of 634.23 or 45.74%. In terms of page views per day, it wasn't as big, dropping from 1472.98 to 865.49, a drop of 607.49 or 41.21%, but it was still quite a fall. Because of that, I'm keeping my page view goal at 25,000 per month and 300,000 per year. Since the new blogging year is one day shorter, that means I'll have to have slightly more page views per day to reach it. I'm not worried.

On the other hand, comments were up from 361 to 464. Much of the increase was due to aggressive and persistent spammers, but some was from my regulars from previous years, such as Infidel753, Bukko Boomeranger, Nebris, K-Dog, Paul W., and Ranch Chimp. Welcome also to Lady M., who shows up when Infidel753 posts a link at his blog, and jkl, who comes here from Facebook. I also have picked up a right-wing troll, Ed, who comes here when Infidel753 posts links to Crooks and Liars. As I've written before, a denialist would be better than the spammers. Ed is proving me right.

I was able to access annual totals for referring sites in October. That was an upgrade I have been wishing from Blogger for years — and I finally got it! Consequently, I can write about sources of readers at a level of detail I couldn't until this year.

The number one source of referrals remains Facebook with ~55,875 page views, ~42,400 from the mobile app, ~12,900 from the website proper, and 575 from link referrals that have been anonymized (l.facebook.com). Most of those come from being shared at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page. The next largest identified source is Google with ~19,200 page views, followed by Twitter with ~5,640 page views. After that, the referring sites get a little more unusual. The fourth most prolific source was onlinenow.top with ~4,320 page views. Don't click on the URL. First, it's the URL of a porn site. Worse yet, it's referrer spam, which means it didn't really send any real readers to my blog. The next site was kunstler.com, which has been a source of readers for this blog from the very beginning, with ~2,950 page views. Two particular entries, Race Hustle and Going Where, Exactly? made the list of specific links for the past year with the former earning 168 page views and the latter 158 page views. Unfortunately, kunstler.com will almost certainly not be a major source of page views for the tenth and any successive years of this blog, as James Howard Kunstler has forbidden me from including any links in my comments. I took that as an opportunity to stop reading his blog entirely. I don't miss it, as my peace of mind has increased noticeably since.

I expect the sixth greatest referring source of readers (fifth if the referrer-spamming porn site is ignored), Infidel753, whose Sunday link roundups have sent ~2,730 page views my way the past year to become more important in the future. I'm fine with that. As I wrote last year, thank you, Infidel, I'm glad to have online friends like you! The next largest source of page views is Bing with ~1,730 followed by Pinterest with ~1,594 page views. I'm not sure about the future importance of Ecosophia.net, John Michael Greer's site, which ranked eighth with 587 page views, 221 of which came from my comment to Waiting for the Next Panic. I haven't posted any links there since the end of October, when Kunstler restricted my activity, although I am still reading his blog.

I will skip the tenth ranked referring source because it's likely more referrer spam to give a shout out to Infidel753 and Tengrain, both of whom have included my links in Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks and Liars. Between them, they have sent at least 424 page views my way, 159 from Mike's Blog Round Up alone. Finally, I'm skipping two more sites that produce referrer spam to mention Boat Bits, which links to my blog about once a month. Thanks, RLW!

Finally, it's time to review the top countries providing readers to my blog. Since I now have access to annual statistics, I will begin with those.

Of course, this blog is based in the United States and is written for an U.S. audience, so it's number one with 201,485 page views from April 1, 2019 to March 20, 2020 (based on the total of 309,088 page views for all countries, it looks like all of March 2019 was cut off; that, or there is something hinky about the way the counter works). The top country where my non-U.S. readers hail from was Canada with 14,843, followed by Germany with 8,891, Italy with 8,828, France with 8,478, Russia with 7,682, and Ukraine with 7,484. Unknown Region ranked eighth with 6,216 page views, followed by the United Kingdom providing 5,878, United Arab Emirates with 1,937, and Singapore as the tenth ranked actual country with 1,799 page views.

The new Blogger interface now reports the top twenty countries instead of the top ten, so here are rest of the top twenty locations. The Netherlands provided 1,187 page views during the past year, Turkmenistan 1,170, Mexico 647, Colombia 469, Switzerland 451, India 378, Japan 358, Brazil 323, with all other countries combined providing 37,450. Among them was probably Australia, which was a major source of readers for the blog over the years. This year, it didn't crack the top twenty!

Now for the all-time stats. Russia remains the top international source of page views with 71,954 total, up from last year's 64,415. The rest of the top six maintained their positions with Canada in third with 61,745 page views, up from 46,767 last year, Germany holding fourth place at 49,740, up from 40,547, with the U.K. close behind Germany in fifth with 44,707, an increase from 39,076. France remained in sixth with 43,720, rising from 34,987 and Ukraine held on in seventh with 28,361 page views, up from 20,499 a year ago. Italy remained in eighth place with 24594 page views, up a lot from last year's 15,523. Once again, thanks to my Italian readers for doing their part to keep my page views up! Last year, I wrote "Maybe I should write more about Italy on this blog in return." Unfortunately, that meant blogging about Italian military providing inspiration during coronavirus lockdown for The Ides of March. The coronavirus strikes! China stayed in ninth among actual countries as page views from the Middle Kingdom actually decreased from 13,510 to 13,497. I've seen that before, which means that these are being counted by the default counter, not the raw counter, and that it is doing what it does for posts, revising the totals as it eliminates duplicates. At least the page view count is still above that for the sixth year of this blog, 13,237. Unknown Region showed up ahead of China with 14,872 page views. Australia remained in tenth while still increasing page views from last year's 10,228 to ~10,400. Since Australia is now in the second ten among my readers' countries, counting Unknown Region, I can only get its readership to three significant digits now.

Speaking of the second ten, here are their all-time page views for the first time on this blog: Poland 5.13K, Brazil 4.18K, United Arab Emirates 3.96K, Singapore 3.35K, South Korea 2.93K, Netherlands 2.46K, Turkey 2.09K, Belgium 1.95K, and all other countries combined 229K.

That's it for this year's statistics post. I'll get to the top post of last year on (Throwback) Thursday. Stay tuned.

Previous posts in this series.

Happy 9th birthday to the blog and Nowruz Mubarak (Happy Persian New Year) to my readers

Statistics entries from previous years.

2 comments:

Infidel753March 23, 2020 at 11:53 AM
I wish I lived in Unknown Region. They seem to have excellent internet access, and I haven't heard of a single covid-19 case there.

I sometimes look at those maps and wonder who in various countries might be reading the blog. You obviously have several regular readers in the UAE, for example. American expats? Locals with an interest in the same topics? One wonders.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Statistics for the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

2 comments: