I loved Rebecca’s and Annabel’s posts on their blog stats, and so have written a short one of my own!
My most popular posts, sadly, have nothing to do with the main purpose of this blog but are all related to the academic job market. My best-performing post of all time is Interviews, Part One: Junior Research Fellowships (JRFs) with a whopping 6559 views to date. I know that this post has been linked on a number of other blogs and academic careers resources.
If we exclude everything on academic careers, my top three posts of all time are:
- Laura Rereading: ‘I belong to him’. (1041 views) This post unpicks the romantic relationships in L.M. Montgomery’s classic Emily of New Moon trilogy and argues that both of Emily’s principal romantic entanglements, with Dean Priest and Teddy Kent, can be seen as dangerously obsessive. A LOT of people find my blog by searching things like ‘teddy kent vs dean priest’ so this is obviously still a live issue!
- ‘Because they could’. (925 views) My review of Naomi Alderman’s The Power sparked a lot of debate. It remains my only review that has received a comment from the author and I just discovered that it has been cited in an academic paper!
- Unravelling. (491 views) I was really proud of this review of Alys Fowler’s memoir Hidden Nature, which meant a great deal to me personally, so I’m pleased to see that it has had a decent number of hits.
I also had a look at the search terms people use to find my blog and have compiled some favourites:
Most recent search term: why is fiction important
Most bizarre search term: dr log splitter
Most satisfying search term: childhood newcastle university laura tisdall
Most frequent search terms: junior research fellowship interview questions; not getting shortlisted for lectureships; #100daysofwriting
Search terms where the searcher was most likely to be disappointed: uplifting pix for my families; nightwaking sex.com; why I dont like the handmaids tale
If you look at the books people are interested in, there are a few that come up again and again:
- Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (usually people hunting for spoilers!)
- Brixton Hill by Lottie Moggach
- The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
- Katy by Jacqueline Wilson
- The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross (including fab search terms such as ‘could the demon headmaster hypnotise a psychopath’)
What are your most popular blog posts? And has anyone used weird or brilliant search terms to find your blog?
‘Dr log splitter’ ! The mind boggles. Thanks for linking Such fun.
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Mystifying!
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Fascinating, I remember a blogger used to mention every week the search terms used to find her blog and they were weird and hilarious, mine seemed boring in comparison.
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I think writing a post on the Demon Headmaster definitely improved the quality of my search terms!
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I am now complete intrigued as to what the person who typed in ‘Dr log splitter’ was actually looking for!!
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I have just googled it out of curiosity. It is a type of log splitter. No idea how it led them here!
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Brilliant!
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Dr log splitter?? 😂 It’s funny what you said about your most popular posts not being content that is the main focus of your blog. I haven’t checked for a while, but if I remember rightly, my most popular posts are about my trips to Iceland and nothing to do with books, lol.
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Basically, if we want to become blogging stars you need to write a travelogue about Iceland and I need to write a lot of miserable posts about the academic job market 😂
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It’s good to have a backup plan, I suppose! 😂
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Where do you find this information? When I look on WordPress at my stats, for instance, I don’t see this information for more than what happened that day.
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I have an arrow (like this >) next to e.g. Search Terms, and if you click it it opens a page where you can change the amount of time (so I clicked All Time).
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Perfect! Thanks.
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I love this! My most popular book posts are my Iris Murdoch project re-reads from the last few years, although I also have a lot for Galsworthy’s The White Monkey (why?) and a Chetan Bhagat this year at least (probably on book lists). I have a lot of hits just on the blog generally which must come from people linking to me, and the second highest total is for my Iris Murdoch Readalong page, which I think comes from people going to it then clicking all the links.
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Thank you! Interesting that those are your top posts 🙂
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Oh this is a fascinating topic – thank you for sharing! Expect something similar from me sometime soonish 😉
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Looking forward to it! 🙂
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Pingback: What are you looking for? Blog stats and search terms
Ooh this is a fun idea for a post! Apparently my most popular post is my review of Sally Rooney’s two published short stories (undoubtedly by people who google searched them looking for a link to them, lol).
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Typical! I was a little bemused by my ‘golden hill spoilers’ search. Golden Hill does have an interesting twist, but I didn’t think it was of the kind that would lead people to desperately seek out spoilers!
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