Wednesday, January 2, 2013

12 Months of Elfshot

Heading into a new year is a good time to consider plans for the next 12 months and review the past year.  On blogs that usually means top 10 lists and a review of statistics.  I spend as much time obsessing over my page views and post stats as any other blogger.  Here's a peak.

These are my monthly stats for 2012.  It was a pretty steady year, with each month of 2012 having a little more traffic than the corresponding month in 2011, although the spring had a bigger increase in activity than the fall.  A lot of that traffic came because of a couple posts on cuts to archaeology at Parks Canada in May.

Here are the yearly stats.  Its good to see that returning visits are still climbing (up to 8,144 from 6,410 in 2011).  The page loads (108,624) and unique visits (63,316) have their own momentum, because old posts show up in search engine searches and people can run across them at any time.   As the blog grows, it casts a wider net for those types of search engine visits.  Its nice to see that some of those people are sticking around for return visits.

So who are the returning visitors?  This is a snapshot from the Elfshot facebook stats page.  The folks who "Like" Elfshot on Facebook probably make up the biggest percentage of returning visitors.  At the moment there are 468 people who like Elfshot on Facebook.  Most of them are English speaking men between the ages of 35 and 44, living in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.   In other words, they are me.


Top 10 Elfshot Posts of All Time

EntryPageviews
May 7, 2010, 15 comments
7725

Jan 11, 2010, 12 comments
6519

Jul 22, 2009, 18 comments
6063

3113

2462

Feb 4, 2011, 2 comments
2317

2078

Mar 16, 2011, 2 comments
2055

Aug 6, 2012
1754

1504

Gate Post
What were people viewing?  The Wolfkiller, Thule Harpoon, and Patinating Copper experiments are still the three most viewed pages on the site.  Two posts from 2012 made it into the Top 10. "What is Happening to Archaeology at Parks Canada" made the list at number 7, because a lot of people were confused and concerned, like me, by the cuts to federal archaeology positions across the country.  That one makes sense, but I have no idea why the "Gate Post" photo became the 9th most visited page of all time.  Usually I can track the stats and figure out where all the traffic is coming from for a particular post, but that one is still a mystery to me.  Its hard to plot a course for the new year based on the popularity of those two posts - one was an uncaptioned photo and the other was a spur of the moment bit of political angst.  Although, I guess pictures and opinions are really what blogs are about.  Photos aren't a problem - maybe I should stick more opinion into my posts?

Photo Credits:
1,5: Tim Rast
2,3: Screen Captures from www.statcounter.com
4: Screen Capture from www.facebook.com


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