HNY everyone, and here are the blog stats and most read posts for 2013

January 6, 2014

     By Duncan Green     

Welcome back, HNY etc. Hope you had a good break (if you took one). Personally I’m glad it’s over – tried to ski, knackered my knee, and meanwhile

Sorry Jacques, the cats have voted....

Sorry Jacques, the cats have voted....

back home, our cats got trapped in a room and pissed all over my son’s final year university notes. For some reason they took particular exception to the post structuralistsDerrida now even more unreadable than before……

So with a sigh of relief, it’s back to the blog. In what is becoming my traditional way to ease back into work after the break, here are the questionable numbers of Google Analytics for 2013.

Total visitors in 2013: 282, 408 – these are supposedly all the different people who read the blog during the year, whether they click just once or visit every day (yes, there are such people). Or at least that’s the number of different IP addresses (so a mobile and a PC count as two people, even if the same individual is using them).

The numbers are much the same as 2012 (277,888 – see report here; 2011 upsum here), so it seems like the blog is now in some kind of steady state, with all the growth moving to twitter (followers doubling to about 15,000 during the year).

Where did they come from? See graph.

blog visitors by country 2013The daily traffic (see second graph) shows the usual weekly cycle (weekends are quieter). In case you’re wondering, the spike on January 22nd was for the best wonkwar of the year, on results and evidence. Time for a rematch?

Blog traffic 2013

Most read posts? The top two are oldies but goodies from 2011, which occupy these slots for the third year running:

What Brits say v what they mean – handy de-coding device. This is the post that just keeps giving.

The world’s top 100 economies: 53 countries, 34 cities and 13 corporations

From this year’s posts, January’s wonkwar produced the top two slots:

The evidence debate continues: Chris Whitty and Stefan Dercon respond from DFID

The political implications of evidence-based approaches (aka start of this week’s wonkwar on the results agenda)blogging-out-loud

Below that it all gets a bit random:

Has Zimbabwe’s land reform actually been a success? A new book says yes.

OK, so how much should charity bosses be paid? Plus your chance to vote

What is a theory of change and how do we use it?

On inequality, let’s do the Palma (because the Gini is so last century)

How to get a job in development – an FP2P guide

And finally, back to the evidence debate:

So What do I take Away from The Great Evidence Debate? Final thoughts (for now)

Turning to 2014, the lessons for boosting traffic is try to be funny, chuck in the odd buzzfeed-style ‘listicle’ (a new and barbaric word), but don’t be scared of being geeky – on this blog at least, people appreciate wonkish debates rather than dumbing down or populism. Reassuring. Open to suggestions for good topics for wonkwars, by the way.

January 6, 2014
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Duncan Green
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