So, pretty well. That’s a common trait to months when I’m running an A To Z. I post something in the sequence three times a week, and that, plus “Reading the Comics” features, and the occasional fill-in extra mean I have a lot of stuff that people find interesting. According to WordPress’s statistics there were 1,232 pages viewed around here in September, which is comfortably over the 1,000 mark that I think is important for some reason. It’s also the third-highest monthly total I have, coming in just behind the March-April 2016 Leap Day A To Z peak. Back then I went two whole months with something posted every day. Some of that, back then, was reblogs, but that’s all right. It looks the same to the statistics page. September it looks like somebody did a deep archive binge at least once, but again, that’s all people looking at something they find interesting enough to try. There had been 1,030 pages viewed in August, and a relatively mere 911 in July. But in August and September there were 21 and 20 posts, compared to only 13 in July.
The number of unique visitors was off, but not by much: down to 672 from August’s 680. In July there had been 568. This isn’t quite the peaks of March-April 2016, but it’s not far off. I seem to do fairly well getting a reliable number of readers in, lately, although June and July of this year were low. (But those were also months I was pulled away, repeatedly, from WordPress and writing.)
For all that, and for as happy as I was with my writing — I think this A To Z was my best glossary sequence yet — it got fewer reader ‘like’s. Only 98 in September, down from August’s 147 and even July’s 118. I’ve been in a rut with those lately and I’m not sure what I need do. In the first A to Z month I ever did there were 518 likes clicked, and where all those potential readers have gone is beyond me. Especially since the number of pages viewed has not shrunk in all that time.
Also mysterious: while the month felt like a chatty one in my comments, it wasn’t really. 42 comments posted, including my own, in September, down from August’s 46 and July’s 45. That beats the doldrom months before that, but again. June 2015: 114 comments. Same number of page views as back then. Even more unique visitors than back then. I don’t mean to say things that shy people away from commenting, but I seem to be doing it anyway.
The popular articles were one perennial, one comics, and three A To Z posts:
- How Many Grooves Are On A Record’s Side?
- Reading the Comics, September 9, 2017: First Split Week Edition, Part 2
- The Summer 2017 Mathematics A To Z: Quasirandom numbers
- The Summer 2017 Mathematics A To Z: Ulam’s Spiral
- The Summer 2017 Mathematics A To Z: Prime Number
There’s no real sense to deciding what you want your audience to like. They’ll like what they do and you have to yield gracefully to that. But I am glad with those three being the top A To Z posts this past month. They’re ones I think I did well on. I also think that if it had come earlier in the month, then X would have made the top five. Maybe it’ll make next month.
So: what are the countries my readers come from? And is this really quite as popular a thing as I always say it is? Here we go.
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 644 |
| United Kingdom | 156 |
| Philippines | 83 |
| India | 55 |
| Canada | 33 |
| Austria | 28 |
| Singapore | 19 |
| Denmark | 17 |
| Australia | 14 |
| Germany | 14 |
| Brazil | 12 |
| Sweden | 10 |
| France | 9 |
| Spain | 9 |
| Thailand | 9 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 8 |
| Slovenia | 8 |
| Mexico | 6 |
| Argentina | 5 |
| Russia | 4 |
| South Africa | 4 |
| Bangladesh | 3 |
| Costa Rica | 3 |
| Finland | 3 |
| Italy | 3 |
| Netherlands | 3 |
| Nigeria | 3 |
| Pakistan | 3 |
| Romania | 3 |
| Switzerland | 3 |
| Vietnam | 3 |
| Barbados | 2 |
| Hungary | 2 |
| Israel | 2 |
| Japan | 2 |
| Nepal | 2 |
| Norway | 2 |
| Portugal | 2 |
| Saudi Arabia | 2 |
| Ukraine | 2 |
| Angola | 1 |
| Armenia | 1 (*) |
| Belarus | 1 |
| Belgium | 1 |
| Bulgaria | 1 |
| Chile | 1 (*) |
| Cyprus | 1 |
| Ghana | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Guam | 1 |
| Indonesia | 1 |
| Ireland | 1 |
| Kenya | 1 |
| Luxembourg | 1 |
| Madagascar | 1 |
| Malaysia | 1 |
| New Zealand | 1 |
| Paraguay | 1 |
| Puerto Rico | 1 (*) |
| Serbia | 1 |
| Slovakia | 1 |
| South Korea | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 |
| United Arab Emirates | 1 (*) |
| Venezuela | 1 (*) |
There were, I honestly believe, 65 countries sending me readers this past month. 25 of them were single-reader countries. In August there were 62 countries sending readers, if you count the European Union and the US Virgin Islands, and for that matter Puerto Rico, as distinct countries. This month, yeah, WordPress lists Guam and Puerto Rico as countries. Also September made me aware of how many of my countrymen apparently didn’t hear about the War of 1898 somehow? I honestly don’t know. I mean, I realize that I’m an unusually history-oriented person, in that I have, without exaggeration, delighted people with trivia about the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. But jeez, this was war with Spain and the coming-out party of American imperialism. You’d think word would have filtered through. Anyway, in September there were 20 single-reader countries with the usual sorts of notes about that.
Armenia, Chile, Puerto Rico, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela were single-reader countries last month; no country’s on a two- or more-month streak.
Insights says my most popular day for reading was Monday, with 20 percent of page views then. Last month it was Wednesday with 18 percent of page views. The most popular hour was 6 pm, with 8 percent of page views. 6 pm WordPress Time is when I schedule stuff to post, so you’d expect that to be popular. But 8 percent not exactly a major bump. I guess people come whenever it’s convenient to their schedule, not my publication. Which is fine.
I start the month with 53,298 page views, from an admitted 24,673, though that’s a probably incomplete count. I’ve also got 717 followers, most of them by WordPress — as you can do from the “Follow Nebusresearch” button at the upper-right corner of the page — and a handful from email. That you can do by the “Follow Blog Via E-Mail” button up there too.
On Twitter I’m @Nebusj. I’m a lot like I am here, there, but shorter. Please feel free to join me there.
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