As I blogged a little over a month ago, one of the reasons I redesigned my blog was because I wanted to showcase my Most Popular Posts – and if you scroll to the bottom of the page and look in the footer, you’ll now see exactly that!
The rankings are determined by a combination of factors – like how many times a unique visitor views the post on the front page of the blog, how many times a post is viewed on it’s own page, and how many times a post is viewed in a feed reader. I wish it also took the number of comments into consideration, but right now it’s not – but that’s okay, it’s still a pretty good representation of what is popular on my blog.
Since the feature is so new, and it’s only been collecting data for a little over a month, newer posts of course have an advantage. Every time a unique visitor views the front page, all the latest posts collect some points.
But are the latest posts really the most popular? Actually not. Because I can see my traffic stats, I’ve known for a long time that there are some older posts that get a lot of traffic. One old post in particular gets twice as much traffic as any other post on my blog.
Here are the top ten posts on my blog, if you only look at single post views – not front page views or feed views.
Single Post Views
- Backstage at MTV’s Rock the Cradle
- Fallbrook Film Festival, Adam McKay
- Just a little tease…
- Lukas Rossi | So This Is Christmas
- Fallbrook Christmas Parade
- Marty Casey in Pacific Beach
- Fallbrook Film Festival, Opening Night
- Hot New Band! Quietdrive!
- Marty Casey on the Sunset Strip
- Um, artists are different…
So what’s so interesting about that list? Well it’s heavily weighted toward celebrities, and nine of the top ten are posts with mostly photos and very little text. In other words, my visitors would rather see my photos, than read my thoughts – which I guess isn’t all that surprising!
The top slot is taken by my backstage documentary of MTV’s Rock the Cradle – and it generates twice as much traffic as any other page on my blog. Why? Well the show featured the children of Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Loggins, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, and other celebrities – and if you google for images of some of those celebrities, you’ll find the images from that post – which leads to traffic.
Next up is a post about the Fallbrook Film Festival, specifically the event with Adam McKay, who is an A-List writer and film director. His first big gig was as a writer on Saturday Night Live and he eventually became the head writer. Then he moved into films with writing partner and actor Will Ferrell, with Elf in 2003, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy in 2004, Talladega Nights in 2006, and Step Brothers in 2008. And once again, if you google for images of him, you find my images. Cool!
The number seven slot is also from the Fallbrook Film Festival. Why? Well it features photos of Chase Masterson, who was on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for five years and General Hospital for four years.
There are also three posts about Marty Casey (1) (2) (3), one about Lukas Rossi, and one about Quietdrive – which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, since they’re also some of my own favorite posts.
Perhaps a little surprising is how high my post on the 2007 Fallbrook Christmas Parade ranks – but the 30 days measured were the end of December and the beginning of January, so that post is more likely to do well during that particular time period – and there are sites linking to my image of the Budweiser Clydesdales and to the image of the guys in the Mini Cars. Who knows? But it’s popular!
The last post, number ten, is the only recent post and the only one that’s all text and no images – so it will probably drop out of the top ten soon! But I love that it’s there now, because it’s cool to think that a few people are reading my words, as well as looking at my images!
So what does all this tell me? And how will it impact what I do in the future? Well actually not much. I mean, is it really all that surprising that people Google the names of famous people? Not really!
But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s fascinating to find out what other people look at on my site. I love seeing what’s most popular!