Monday, August 01, 2011

Blog performance July 11

stats july 11 2

In am earlier post I commented on an apparent unexplained decline in blog traffic. The graphic shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog to end July.

All three of my heaviest traffic blogs display a broadly similar pattern. Just as I couldn't explain the biggish increase increase in the middle of the period, so now I can't explain the decline. It's clearly related to changes in search engine traffic.

In terms of apparent reader interests, the most popular posts in July were:

I said that I couldn't explain the rise and decline.

Looking back over past post stats, part of the explanation links to topicality. As Neil found with his Australia's Got Talent posts (Yea, the End approacheth–of July that is, and of who knows what else in the USA…), topical posts do grab attention. An equivalent on this blog would be the post I wrote on the Toowoomba floods. However, part of the explanation links to the sudden disappearance of a single post from the stats - Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world.

This post consistently ranked number one or two each month for a very long period, scoring 3,750 page views since August 2009. Now its gone. This change is clearly search engine related. Part of the reasons for the post's popularity lay in the fact that you found it if you searched on Chinese Gardens.

Enough of monthly entrails gazing beyond noting that the stats now show the presence of the latest technology in terms of browsers and operating systems including mobile. It's small, but it's there. 

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