30 December 2010
Kuriositas - The Top Ten of 2010
It's an answer with a question mark (thanks Duran Duran) to be frank. Some articles I expected to do well did just that (hurrah and shots of Sailor Jerry all round!). Others (on which I spent many hours) sank without a trace. Then there were some which I expected to get a handful of hits which went on to inexplicable nettie hugeness. So, here is the Kuriositas Top Ten story of 2010. The posts are in descending order of the number of hits they received up to the time of this going live. If you would like to see the original posts, click on the titles below.
10 - I Am Borg: The World's First Officially Recognized Cyborg
In his second year at the college he attended a cybernetics lecture given by Adam Montandon, who was a student at Plymouth University. After introducing himself to Montandon and explaining his condition the pair started to work on what became known as the eyeborg project.
The popularity of this post came completely out of the blue. All in all it received..
54,428 Pageviews
This was a surprise hit, but on reflection perhaps not that surprising. I like to rummage around Vimeo (everyone has to have a hobby) and one day I came across this gem which had received next to now views. It tells a familiar story which resonated with a lot of Kuriositas' readers. Created by teenage animator Alex Heller this remarkable piece of animation really captured the imagination of many. A day or so after Kuriositas highlighted it, the animation hit the blogosphere with a vengeance, garnering Ms Heller a lot of new fans from around the world.
55,138 Pageviews
8 - Hakone - Japan's Amazing Open Air Museum
74,174 Pageviews
So far no particular trend. However, the Hakone museum post is one of several museums I wrote about this year. Although this is the only one featured in the Top Ten, the others posts did well too...
They Ajanta caves lay undisturbed for hundreds of years. Then, in April 1819, during the time of the British Raj, an officer with the unassuming name of John Smith came rediscovered a doorway to one of the temples. He had been hunting tiger – something of which many would disapprove today but his next step was disrespectful in the extreme. He vandalised one of the walls with his name and the date, something which is still visible today.
Now, this does begin a trend. You will notice that there are no less than five places featured in the top ten (six if you count Hakone Museum). Although I had no real intention to start a travel blog, these are the posts that have done very well. However, it should be pointed out that these places mostly have something quite bizarre going on, geologically or architecturally. Still, Ajanta has still not quite made it over the 100K mark, coming in at...
97,187 Pageviews
Although this wonderful short movie perplexed people as much as it gave them pleasure it turned out to be an unexpected hit for the site. Again it was found as a result of my incessant rummaging through Vimeo. It also goes to show that you do not have to spend weeks and weeks preparing posts to get a very healthy amount of hits.
118,776 Pageviews
Matamata in New Zealand was the place chosen to film the Hobbiton scenes of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy of movies. After the film was finished the farm upon which the Hobbit village was created asked if some of the hobbit homes could remain to serve as an additional tourist attraction to the area.
I wrote this post when I discovered that the sheep had effectively taken over the site. As a fairly outraged LoTR fan(atic) I simply had to point this out to the world! You understand, surely? Some people did - the post received
130,054 Pageviews
4 - Fly Geyser - Not Quite Out of This World
The geyser can be found in Hualapai Valley near Gerlach, Nevada. It is a little seen phenomenon as the land upon which it sits is private. It can be seen from State Road 34 but unless you have permission the view from a distance is all you should attempt.
This is a recent post and is still doing the business (as it were) so I fully expect the hits to go higher. However, I think people liked this post because the geyser is on private land and very hard to get to - plus not many photographers have taken pictures of it. I had to get special permission from a number of Flickr members to reproduce their pictures. It is something worth doing if you cannot find Creative Commons pictures. A polite email requesting permission can obviously result in a negative reply but often photographers are happy for some of their images to be used (and you will have to be very specific) if you link to their website (the power of backlinks!).
130,553 Pageviews
3 - The Mysterious Moeraki Boulders
This was a surprise hit. The Moeraki boulders are featured on many sites on the internet and so my expectations were not high in terms of hits. However, just after I first started Kuriositas, a friend suggested that I should have called the site Sh*t That I Like as I was blithely posting non-commercial articles because the subject matter gave me pleasure rather than in the expectation of a zillion hits. It is something I still keep in mind. If I like something, then perhaps there are others who will too.
Of course, the spectacular images help too. I am not precious about my writing - I am never going to be the next Dickens or Shakespeare (alas, alack and so on) but I do realise that our culture (locally and globally) is becoming more visual by the hour. The photographs I use are very carefully selected for maximum visual impact. Sometimes it pays off.
237,822 Pageviews
2 - The Lady and the Reaper
An old lady is nearing the end of her days and she longs to be with the husband she has lost. So, when death pays her a visit on night in the form of a rather comical Grim Reaper then she touches his extended hand without fear. Only, she has not considered that a meddlling doctor on our side of the great divide will decide that she must be resuscitated .
Again, this post surprised me. Again, it was just an animation I knew and adored. Share what you like and your enthusiasm for it and the returns can astonish (not to mention bewilder). Well, there is a new word. When something does better than you expect, you are necessarily bestonished.
240,071 Pageviews
1 - Lofoten -Arctic Circle Anomaly
The archipelago of Lofoten in Norway is north of the Arctic Circle. Yet throughout the year it has temperatures which belie its position. This is because of the largest positive temperature anomaly in the world relative to latitude. It makes Lofoten an unexpected delight – its early settlers must have thought they had stumbled across an arctic paradise.
I almost did not write about Lofoten. I wasn't sure whether people would want to read about a place which is so far off the beaten track. However, I then remembered that hits are not why I write - I write on the subject of things that have drawn my attention - and this place most certainly did that. As it happened I am glad I followed my instincts. The post I almost didn't write got the most hits for a single article since the blog started.
358,640 Pageviews
Other Stats and Stuff
The page tabs at the top of the site were something that I took a while to implement (sheer laziness, I guess). I should have done it earlier. The animation tab on its own has had 67,310 Pageviews. OK, that's the top hitting page tab but it made the time and effort worthwhile. I just wish I could get someone else to update them!
Top Referring Sites
So, this is where the hits come from. I am not going to include percentages or numbers here but these are the top ten sites for Kuriositas (with the biggest referer first).
- Stumbleupon: some I submit myself. Very nice SU users do the rest (and those posts submitted by others have been the big hitters. I sometimes have to stop myself from doing it and wait for others to discover them. I am very impatient and this is something I have to work on!).
- Reddit - very much as above. Those posts submitted by Redditors I do not know do significantly better than those I submit myself.
- LinkWithin (the links to other articles on the site at the bottom of each post). Nice feature - and worthwhile setting up, self evidently. Also shows thatpeople are willing to explore a site's content if it is put on a plate for them.
- Meneame: As far as I can see this is a Spanish version of Reddit/Digg. I have no idea who submits links from Kuriositas to Meneame but my love for them is eternal.
- Terra: Another Spanish site. This is a huge magazine type site and Kuriositas posts have been included occasionally on their best of the web section.
- Google: Never underestimate the search engines. I take a lot of time tagging my posts correctly. Nice bots!
- Facebook: Most of the big bloggers I talk to (whose daily hits are about what I get in a year!) are saying that the social media site is the way forward. This is the first year for many that FB has appeared in their top ten and it is a definite upward trend. So, start up a FB page!
- Wykop: A Polish site very much like Digg or Reddit. Dzien dobry, dziekuje!
- Notcot: An excellent links based arts site - has featured Kuriositas about a dozen times this year.
- Neatorama: One of the consistently best magazine style uber blogs of the internet
This is something of a surprise to me as I had no idea that my audience was so largely US based! Although the other countries' hits number in the tens of thousands when looked at as a percentage it really puts things in to perspective!
- US - 72% (gasp)
- Canada - 8%
- Spain - 7%
- United Kingdom - 7%
- Australia - 2%
- Germany - 2%
- Poland - 1%
- Mexico - 1%
- Netherlands - 0.3%
- Ireland - 0.3%
So a great big thank you to all the readers of Kuriositas but particularly to our friends in the US.
You are probably bored now. I must say I can feel a creeping ennui here myself. So, end of post!
Other Image Credits
Neil Harbisson
