2013 Crooked Road in Review

The WordPress.com blog statistics helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Search Terms

So, not so much traffic. But I found the stats interesting anyway. Most of it was expected, but I was surprised by a couple of things. I hadn’t noticed that “Svartidaudi Interview” and “Desiree’s Dolls” were both frequent search terms. Strangely, my interview with Svartidaudi didn’t even run on this site. It ran on No Clean Singing.

Unfortunately, there was no category for most amusing search terms. In December, someone searched for “pictures of gemma dee condon” and ended up on my blog. Of course I had to google her too. She lives in Sussex, but the image search only turned up Gemma Arterton and an Italian man. I didn’t know Gemma was a gender-neutral name! Someone else searched for “penis ballett” (spelling intact) and ended up here for the obvious reason that I wrote about the video for Fjogur Piano, which had a penis in it.

Source Code

Besides the ever-entertaining search terms, I also like to see where people are coming from. Unsurprisingly, they are mostly reading in the U.S., Iceland, and the U.K. The old adage that you are your own best advertising (that’s an adage, right?) holds true, in that my Facebook and Twitter posts drive the most traffic this way. But no blog is an island. Laxness in Translation has helped me make sense of the Nobel Laureate’s novels; it has also directed many readers to this site. No Clean Singing has provided me an education in all things metal, offered me a platform for writing about some of my favorite bands, and posted some oft-clicked links to this site. So to Professor Batty, takk fyrir, and horns up to Islander.

It’s been an interesting couple of years traveling this crooked road. It may be a blog less traveled by, but to me it’s made all the difference – or at least, I’ve learned a lot. I hope you get something out of it, too, and thanks for sticking with me.