WordPress, the website that is the host to this and other blogs, makes statistics available for their bloggers. I’ve had my blog for over a year and overall have had 1,600 views or so. That’s not viral, but more than I would suppose from the feedback I get, which is mostly from my family. One statistic ranks your blogs by most views. Another stat I like tells you what search queries got your blog viewed.
For me this has been my most popular, Long Review of World Industries Box Set, with over 100 views. Some of the google searches to get this are comical. One person entered ‘why did [pro skater] go to jail?’ Another person searched, ‘does [pro skater] smoke pot?’ In this blog entry I did not talk of professional skaters’ personal lives, but their parts in these famous videos. So using their names was enough for my blog to come up when people look them up in search engines. That blog entry took me awhile to write, is on specific films that have a following, and is by far my most read or viewed one. It just tells the views and not if the person bothered to read it at all.
Tied for second in the most views are these four entries with 45 views each, about, My interpertation of Miller and Jong, Tender is the night four times, and Letter to a skateboard deck. The about section should have more views I think because that would mean people were impressed with the entry they read, so that’s a bummer. But the other three entries are similar in that they are about something. Two of them are about literature. I’m happy to say that that someone looked at my blog from this search query on google, ‘tender is the night book discussion.’ There was another query about Jong that was on my stats, but I don’t remember it. The Letter to a Skateboard Deck is a recent blog, within the past three weeks, and it’s already one of my most viewed blog entries.
I think that the lesson in looking at these statistics from my own blog, is that entries that are topical get viewed more, because people can search them. The purpose of this blog is to practice writing, but I do get a kick out of linking an entry to facebook, and later in the day checking the statistics to see that it had 10 or so views. I also get a kick of seeing these somewhat bizare search queries that random people typed in and from that were able to access my blog. However those top blog posts of mine did take a little more effort and organizing than some of the entries I post.
I like to write about these two things, my goals, and logging my good days. I think that goals are fun to write, but not necessarily to read. Maybe I’m writing the same thing over and over. The statistics do show that these are viewed less than the topical entries. My day logs are fun to write. My last entry I talked about what a good weekend I had, and I imagine in a few months I’ll enjoy reading over it. But that is kind of personal in tone, and not that searchable. If I was famous my day logs would have a following, but the best I could hope for is that the people that know me find these entries interesting.
I think I shouldn’t dwell about the statistics available for my blog too much, and just write regular entries. I should write an entry at least once a week and what it’s about does not matter. That said, my next entry I’m going to write about every pro skater I have ever seen in my life.
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