Monday, January 24, 2011

What Is Popular On Cedar's Mountain?

Over the years, I've got to wondering about the aftereffects of the three pronged giant imprint that I left all over the Cyber World with my blog. By imprint, I mean the various leftover blog links on posts and in my semi-dead profiles in the chat rooms, my profile links throughout my journeys in the blog world, and the blog feed that I have on Facebook. By aftereffects, I mean what kind of blog posts were people reading when they happened to stop by for a visit.

I really wanted to find out what people were reading here, so after reading a post about Google Analytics that a fellow blogger wrote about positively, I checked it out. And just as quick, I dropped the idea. Why? Because I'm not that computer savvy when it comes to editing code in a template, I was deathly afraid of screwing up my template while trying to figure out how to properly insert the code that was required to use Google Analytics.

Fast forward to last year.

Among the many bells and whistles that Blogger rolled out, was the tab called "Stats". "Stats" in my opinion was the best thing Blogger could come up with to replace the Google Analytics that people like me, who wanted to know what people were reading on their blog, were deathly afraid of screwing up the html code for their blog while trying to make Google Analytics work.

And because of this "Stats" tab, for the first time in about a year (ever since I added those "About Pages" to my blog) I was able to add a gadget that showed the top posts on my blog. I narrowed down the choices to the top four for the current month and called it "The Four Season's Of Popularity".

But wait, there's more. I like that particular gadget so much that I decided to write a post showcasing what Cedar's Mountain's top ten popular posts for last year (or rather, May '10 thru mid Jan'11) were. Feel free to explore the links in question and I hope you have enjoyable trip down memory lane.

10} Newington Center....And Beyond (3): Apparently the only reason why this is in my top ten, is because it contains the picture of a cat sitting on a couch with a bottle of beer and the t.v. remote.

9} Thou Are A Hypocrite: This was one of the few nationally oriented political posts I wrote, which basically pointed out how hypocritical the national media was when it came to the Tea Party movement and the current party occupying the White House.

8} Tete-Tete-Tete: A three part post about Shooting Suburbia, "Don't Ask Don't Tell", and my musical choices when I did a monster two day edit of my book Line 21.

7} Book Review Of A Short Story Anthology by Charles Gramlich: Need I say more? Charles was thoughtful enough to feature a link to this post from his blog, and the end result was that it became #7 on my list.

6} Pics, Familia And Facebook: A two part post about Shooting Suburbia and a pitch for more Facebook friends, which also included a sample status update about my daughter.

5} Pictorial Post: Apparently a 55 word post is all the rage in blog land.

4} Damn! I Done Got Banned From A Fan Page!: In the summer of 2010 a local radio station (WCCC 106.9FM) made a ton of wholesale personnel changes which culminated in a lot of vitriol from the listening public. I was a fan of their Facebook page until things came to a head in September.

3} Life Is Tough, But It's Tougher If You're Stupid: This is one of my most popular e-mail based posts.

2} Won't You Please Paint Me With The Widest Brush You Got?: This is a rant mainly about when people launch unprovoked attacks on others who have the temerity to disagree with a generally accepted left-leaning opinion that is prevalent in the academic world.

And finally, 1} All Points Bulletin: The main reason as to why I believe that this post is numero uno on the hit parade (236 page views), is because the title actually follows one of the guiding principles of the blog world, which is to have a title that contains key search words and/or phrases. I guess people come to here expecting something about an online computer game called "All Points Bulletin", because they certainly ain't coming here for the content of this Valentine Day oriented post, which by the way, contains one of the best pieces of flash (a shade over 300 words) that I've ever written on the fly.

16 comments:

  1. Stats on google is pretty awesome but when I do look there I've noticed that the posts people look at the most have the least comments. I think they were search engine friendly.

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  2. Sounds like a fun gadget. It's interesting what gets the most hits.

    LOL on your top one!

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  3. I really had not taken a good look at that stat thing - this made me look. It's funny - a post from more than a year ago with the words Tom & Jerry in the title is my leading page view. I can see why, I guess. It appears that I have quite a few lookers who don't comment also - maybe I should let them comment anonymously, but I kind of don't want to do that.

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  4. good post G---

    you know what else is good?

    awards!

    i gave you one!

    Bruce
    Bruce Johnson JADIP
    Evil Twin
    Bruce’s Evil Twin
    The Dreamodeling Guy
    dreamodeling!
    The Guy Book
    The Guy Book

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  5. T1G: Very true. That number one post of mine originally generated only 8 comments (probably because it was originally posted on a Sunday). It also has no pictures, which as you know is pretty much a staple of this blog.

    Jewel: It really was interesting to see not only what garnered the most hits but to go back and re-read some of those links trying to find out why they were garnering that many hits.

    Lynn: I can understand not wanting people to comment as Anon (I got read of that function on my book blog when people were leaving me spam on it), but its still kind of fun to find out what people are reading (which is why I got that Feedjit widget in the first place).

    Bruce: Thanks. I will wander over to your blog to see what kind juicy goodness you'd left for me.

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  6. I find the stats confusing. I can get 28 comments on a post but only 10 page views. Now how does that work?

    I don't think the stats are that great, but they are definitely better than nothing.

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  7. Joe: I think it works on the premise of people who actually stop by your blog as opposed to the people who may subscribe to it or follow it.

    A good example would be my #1 post. It only had 8 original comments but over 260 page views. I get a lot of drive by traffic with my blog, which is due to the fact of a lot of leftover links from places I've been in the past three yeas.

    I agree that they aren't that great, but for me, at least it satisfies the need to know what people are actually reading on my blog.

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  8. Hmm, interesting. I'd be tempted to do the same with my blog. Although I'm guessing the posts about boobs come up tops.

    And...drum roll...my word verification is "outhoot." I am not making this up.

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  9. R: Outhoot? What the hell is "outhoot"?

    Anyways...I think it would definitely be interesting to see whast your top ten is. :D

    I know right now as of the date of this comment, a post from two years ago has squeake into my top four for the month.

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  10. Well, I'm not sure what "outhoot" means, but it could be a verb dealing with Hooters. No?

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  11. If it is any consolation...I am so computer illiterate I cannot even change the text in my leave your comment section...

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  12. R: It's possible.

    Darth: Long time no see, hope you're doing well.

    Yeah I had that problem for the longest time, then I found a link to a guide called "Bare Bones Guide to HTML" about a couple of years ago. Helped me out tremendously.

    Old version can be found at http://www.werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html

    It definitely helped me understand the "edit html" tag whenver I wrote a post.

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  13. Guess I should pay more attention to stats. I don't know much of nothing.

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  14. Charles: Only if you're curious about what people read on your blog when they happen to stop by.

    I'm always curious about what people think of me, so this is the easiest way I can think of to track people.

    Also gives me good ideas on what I could write about for my blog.

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  15. Darth is just busy riding bikes with my sadistic husband...or so he says!

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  16. R: Gotta find a way to get exercise somehow, no matter how much pain is involved.

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Go on, give me your best shot. I can take it. If I couldn't, I wouldn't have created this wonderful little blog that you decided to grace with your presence today.

About that comment moderation thingy: While yes, it does say up above I can take it, I only use it to prevent the occasional miscreant from leaving thoughtless and/or clueless comments.

So remember, all of your comments are greatly appreciated and all answers will be given that personal touch that you come to expect and enjoy.

G. B. Miller

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All the content that you see here, except for the posting of links that refer to other off-blog stories, is (c) 2008-17 by G.B. Miller. Nothing in whole or in part may be used without the express written permission of myself. If you wish to use any part of what you see here, please contact me at georgebjr2006@gmail.com