Pause for Statistical Reflection
I’m not quite up to 7,500 visits yet (7,219 according to the counter), and I wasn’t planning on shooting off any fireworks until I made 10,000 hits. But, looking at my statistics page, I thought I’d do a little brief analysis here of who’s been visiting and why.
WARNING: Ahead lie statistics, with a potentially high MEGO (Mine Eyes Glazeth Over) factor. If you’re not into people gassing on about what’s popular and why, then move on, people. The glazing starts after the break….
This is the current list of my top ten posts in terms of popularity — how many visits, for whatever reason.
- Fashion for the Holidays, 256
- Meet Me at Frank’s Place, 236
- Custom Couture by Hanalyn, 205
- Linden Lab “Tightens” Trademark Control, 167
- Contact Sheet — Shoshana Epsilon, Moire, 165
- About Harper Ganesvoort, 160
- Cory (Linden) Ondrejka Departs Linden Lab, 152
- News on Free Skins! Updated, 152
- SL Brand Center — Followup, 149
- Ready for Oscar Night, 112
Total: 1754 hits.
The first obvious thing is that four of the top ten (1, 3, 8 and 10) are fashion related, with 725 hits between them (41% of the total visits). Not surprising, perhaps, in the fashion-obsessed world of Second Life; but it surprises me a touch. Only 26 of 121 articles (including this one) have anything to do with fashion, according to my tags — just a little over a fifth. Of course, I write about what I think is good fashion when I mention it, and so that may help. Another possible factor driving it, though, may be the tags themselves. WordPress.com tags do not reference to Technorati; they reference to the WordPress.com server, which sends you to all blogs containing that tag when you click on it. I may be getting RL visits as well as SL fashionistas — though there is no way to tell with the WordPress.com statistics engine; they don’t give us that detailed a metrics breakdown. Any road, fashion is far and away the leader on this SL blog; not what I intended, but (grin, shrug).
The next popular “super-category” is SL news, with 468 hits (27%). Those, according to my reading, are articles 4, 7 and 9 on the list. Again, I hadn’t intended to become a news source for Second Life, either; but there have been a multitudinous multitude of hard news topics concerned with the Grid and Linden Lab’s policies, and I like to think that I’ve been trying to write fair, thorough and balanced reports on them from available information. How much of this is self-stroking of my ego and how much is true, your mileage may vary. I can offer this, though; people have been linking to those stories as well. Hopefully my quality has been as good as my ego says it is….
That leaves three articles on my top ten list. One of them is my About page, which makes sense; people want to know more about who’s writing the drivel they’re reading (grin). Another of the trio is one of my Contact Sheet photography columns, which makes me very happy indeed. I enjoy photography on the Grid, and I like spreading the word about items that I spot that strike me as very good or excellent. (This column has one of my favorite photos, as it happens; look at the costume worn by Moire Georgette at the bottom of the article.) The one remaining item, “Meet Me at Frank’s Place,” used to be number 1, until “Fashion for the Holidays” jumped past it for some unknowable reason. Intriguing that it’s hung on so long, as it was one of my first articles. It still gets hits even today, at least a few a week. I hope that this drives some business to Gymmy and Nanceee’s club; the Sinatras have been very good friends, and (as regular readers may recall) were even my landlords for a time until the lag in their region got so bad. (The down side of popularity in Second Life, sadly.)
Not bored yet? Here’s my top ten searches:
- formal hairstyles, 79
- updo hairstyles, 52
- diana ewing, 46
- “avilion”"second life”, 34
- droxine, 24
- bank closures, 21
- avilion, 20
- zonja capalini, 16
- ginny talamasca, 16
- andromeda, 15
Based on what I’ve written, these are perhaps more understandable. As many who’ve met me in world know, I’m a bit of a fashionista, but even more a “coiffurista.” I love wild hairdos, as my championing of Sinsation tells you. Whether the searches are from SL residents or RL types looking for more legitimate hairstyles, who knows but the searchers themselves…? Avilion had an uptick of interest here when I was trying to find links to Avilion-related blogs (similar to the people writing about their experiences in the Caledon regions), and actually had a flurry of comments for a brief span of time. Several articles invoke the shade of the late Ginny Talamasca, whose clothing designs occupy so many Inventories now in the Grid.
“bank closures,” of course, relates to the Grid bank crisis of several months back, but the continued interest may have something to do with the RL economy. “droxine” and “diana ewing” tie in to the picture of the actress in her one appearance on classic Star Trek as Droxine, the daughter of Plasus of Ardana, and to the shot of me posing in the copy of her costume created by designer Hanalyn Ferrer. Those two shots show up currently as number 6 and 7 on a Google Images search. Zonja Capalini has appeared in another Contact Sheet column. And last, the Andromeda gown by Ann Otoole is another of my favorite formals, and I posed in a photosphere for several shots to illustrate the article on holiday fashion back in December. (Though some of those could be of people looking for the Great Spiral Galaxy, M31. This is less likely, as the picture and article don’t show up early on Google searches.)
Enough analysis for now. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment (grin).
