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A statue by Belle Brooks, inspired by the search
for "giraffe sex" on Google that has gone
viral. (Image Source) |
A year ago (to the day) I wrote a post on
giraffe sex. It was basically an experiment to see if it would increase page views to my blog. It actually worked. The search term “giraffe sex” is the second most popular search term that bring viewers to my blog, that is according to Blogger's statistics. Google Analytics describes it slightly differently, saying that the actual keywords “giraffe sex” is the tenth in traffic ranking and “giraffe” fifth. Be that as it may, it is obvious that people with interest in giraffes (and giraffe procreation) quite frequently land on my blog. According to Google Analytics the keyword “
Kakashi” is still by far the most frequent entrance to my blog and Blogger's statistics concur that “Kakashi Hatake” is the top search term for people to land at
Skryfblok.
To all the Kakashi Hatake fans, here's a naked picture of Kakashi in the shower! (Lol, this is bound to shoot up visits! Nothing like sex to boost traffic, as the giraffe post experiment proved.)
Other favourites are “
Andy Lau”, “
do mermaids exist”, and “
body painting.” Other posts that is a gateway to my blog are the one I did on the
physical differences between Koreans and Caucasians and the post in which I announced my new (Afrikaans) blog
Ingelegde Lywe that focusses on poetry, particularly “liefdesgedigte” (love poems) and “erotiese verse” (erotic verses).
There were two distinct spikes on my blog, one in March 2011 and the other in May 2011. The first spike was because of the earth quake and resultant tsunami in Japan in March. The pageviews jumped with nearly 2000 from January and February. I wrote two posts on the earthquake. The first
an Afrikaans post in which I announced the earthquake's occurrence on the day (11 March 2011). The second a few days later in which I explained
why Korea was spared from the tsunami that followed the earthquake.
Traffic went down with about a 1000 views in April but went up again with another thousand in May. I'm not too certain about the reason for the May spike. I wrote a couple of controversial posts that month. For instance I wrote about
how Google tailors our search results; I wrote (favourably and sympathetically) about
Lady Gaga's song “Judas” and her struggle with sin; I wrote with disgust about the
pleasure people derived from Osama bin Laden's death; I announced that
Armageddon would not happen on Saturday, May 21st; I laughed at the release of
Obama's Birth Certificate; and I gave a link and feedback about the
talk I gave about Christianity and Romantic Poetry. Any, or maybe a combination of these posts could have caused the increase in page views.
While Blogger's statistics show a slow but steady decline in traffic since May, Google Analytics tells a different story. According to Analytics visits have nearly double from May to August. There has been a slight recession of late, but of course the month is not yet at an end so the statistics are a little fuzzy for October. In July and August I went on holiday so I posted some photos of my trip in Laos, Thailand and China. I can't think why such photos should increase views to my blog, however. There are hardly anything else I think noteworthy, apart from, maybe, my “
Kukkiwon Gangster” photo, which is slightly controversial, but only to those privy to the dark secrets of Taekwon-Do history.
The bounce rate for my blog is pretty high, around 80%. People land here hoping for a website on Kakashi or giraffe sex or mermaids, and instead find a blog with over a thousand posts on very random topics. Disappointed they leave soon afterwards. Most of these people don't stay longer than 30 seconds. For a blog with no specific purpose other than logging my life and thoughts, this is not an issue. Were I trying to sell something (a product, or myself), a high bounce rate would have been a bad thing.
Most visitors to
Skryfblok are American. The second highest geography that visit my blog is South Africa. This is heartening as one reason I started this blog was to keep my friends and family who mostly live in South Africa up to date with my life here in Korea. It seems to be working. Of all the visitors from around the world most do not return; however just under 10% return to the blog; i.e. they are likely followers of the blog. Interestingly, most of these returning visitors are from South Korea and the second highest grouping of returning visitors are from South Africa. Does that mean that my social network in South Korea has surpassed my social network in South Africa? It would be a surprising finding if it's true, for I am still under the impression that I have far more friends in my country of birth than here in my host country.
If you have read this whole post, give yourself a pat on the back, for you must definitely be either a real friend or a true Skryfblok follower to have read through all this boring and somewhat useless statistics about a rather purposeless blog. Lots of love to you!
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