It's a new year, so that means it's time to take a look back at the previous year. In graphical form, it looks like this:
Clears it all up, doesn't it? That's the past year in blog traffic, showing pageviews per day. Integrate it all up, and it comes to 717,254 pageviews. That's kind of mind-boggling, really. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that there have been 2,465,829 pageviews here since the move to ScienceBlogs in January 2006.
So, what drew eyeballs this year? There were a total of 14 posts that drew more than 2,000 pageviews according to Google Analytics. In order, they were:
- 29,141 views: the Speed of God
- 8,655 views: Why Does Excel Suck So Much?
- 7,379 views: The Bohr-Einstein Debates, With Puppets
- 6,486 views: Unscientific American by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
- 5,202 views: The Myth of the Abrasive Genius
- 4,174 views: My Doomsday Weapon
- 3,812 views: The Faulty Thermodynamics of Children's Stories
- 3,686 views: Pop Quiz: Michelson Interferometer
- 3,534 views: The Limits of Elven Vision
- 2,905 views: Malcolm Gladwell Is No Charles Barkley
- 2,654 views: Volume Packing of Breakfast Cereal
- 2,512 views: Nobel Betting Pool
- 2,436 views: Stargate: Universe and the Myth of the Lone Genius
- 2,378 views: Dehumanizing the Two Cultures
Again: clears everything right up, doesn't it?
On the one hand, the two posts that I liked enough to add to the "Greatest Hits" sidebar, Science Is What Makes Us Human and This Is My Job, were nowhere near the top 14, with 993 and 917 views, respectively. On the other hand, that's a pretty decent list of stuff. OK, the top two are a bit of fluff and what's most likely search engine catharsis, and a couple of them get a little ranty, but there's some decent science content in there. Some of it is a little silly, but then, I'm currently promoting a book about talking to my dog, so that seems fair enough.
What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, silly sells. Also, insulting famous people continues to work well (A.O. Scott Is an Ignoramus was at 1,694 views, three spots off the list). There was less intra-blog squabbling this year than some past years, mostly because I was making a real effort to avoid reading the sorts of blogs that annoy me. I didn't do much for ResearchBlogging this year, but nothing I did for them was even close.
Anyway, if you want to know what I did last year, blog-wise, there's the executive summary. It's fairly representative of what I usually post, so if you're new here, and want to know what to expect, there you go.
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You clearly need more guest blog posts on string theory.
What was the big spike from in September? Just curious.
Also, I find it interesting that the things you think are awesome are not the same as the general readers. I find the same thing. I will spend a ton of time putting together something I think is great. Then, I will throw together some quick commentary on something silly and it is a big hit. Go figure.
Oh - also, your Excel Sucks post is probably popular because people are probably googling "why does excel suck?" and they get your post.
The September spike is from the Speed of God post, which got linked by one of the big aggregators. It was a weirdly quiet link, though-- for whatever reason, very few of them left comments. I didn't realize it had even happened until a week or so later, when I checked the traffic for something else.
Had I known, I would've stuck a really prominent "Buy My Book!" link at the bottom...
The Excel Sucks post is almost certainly getting search engine traffic. It's also from early in the year, which helps build up hits for that sort of thing.