After two years of regular geology blogging I was thinking it might be fun to highlight the posts that I think are my best work as well as the ones that have been the most popular…they are not necessarily the same. This just goes to show it is impossible to predict what the collective consciousness of the geoblogopshere or the geotwitterverse will like the best. Some of these posts come from my old blogging home, which is just a regular blogger site so the links will take you there. Others are more recent and were posted on my EGU blog. I hope you enjoy this little blast from the past.
This EGU blog went live on October 1, 2012 and in that time it has had 2,530 visits of which 66% were by unique visitors, who spent on average 3 minutes on the site, which I think/hope means they actually read something. The most viewed pages have been:
|
Title |
Pageviews |
| 1. |
|
777 |
20.79% |
| 2. |
|
282 |
7.54% |
| 3. |
|
211 |
5.64% |
| 4. |
|
173 |
4.63% |
| 5. |
|
162 |
4.33% |
| 6. |
|
125 |
3.34% |
| 7. |
|
118 |
3.16% |
| 8. |
|
115 |
3.08% |
| 9. |
|
114 |
3.05% |
| 10. |
|
104 |
2.78% |
There have been visits from 73 countries so far. Interesting ones include: Laos, Faroe Islands, Iran, Oman and Mauritius. The countries that have made up the largest proportion of my visits have been the United States with 39%, Canada 20% and the UK 11%, Germany 5% and Australia 4%.
My old blogging home, pre EGU, has received 59,503 pageviews since it went live in early February 2011. The numbers for this site come from Blogger stats since I didn’t start using Google Analytics until last year. The most popular posts there have been:
| Entry |
Pageviews |
|
|
3153
|
|
|
3006
|
|
|
1910
|
|
|
1522
|
|
|
1406
|
The countries that liked this site the most are pretty much the same as the EGU site, which I hope means I pulled a few people over with me! The United States makes up 62% of the pageviews, Canada 7%, UK 5.5%, Australia, 2% and Russia 1.5%. I guess it should’t come as a surprise that most of the views for both sites come from North America, where I am located and English speaking countries, the language the blog is written in. I suppose I could read a bit deeper into and point out that both sites have a lot of countries with resource driven economies in the top 5, but that might be too big a stretch since I suspect it has more to do with the language.
My favourites
My personal favourite posts over the past few years are mostly on the most viewed lists above. It is hard to pick just one that I like the best though and there are a few that I wrote early on in my blogging career that only got a few pageviews, but I think are pretty interesting. Here are my top 5 in no particular order.
The Odyssey and Geology – The Search for Ithaca – this post summarizes a Nature Geoscience paper that surmises the legendary island of Ithaca has been lost in plain sight for the past few thousand years…
The Art of Geology – this was an Accretionary Wedge topic and for whatever reason I felt inspired and feel that I made a pretty solid contribution to this one.
The Media Portrayal of Geologists – This is a funny one….my apologies if not all the videos work…they were uploaded 2 years ago.
Back to Basics on Groundwater – This one is a really simple primer on groundwater and groundwater flow. It has proved to be extremely popular so far…maybe I should write another one…
It’s all about scales – I had been planning this one for some time and I have to say it turned out better than I had expected.
Bonus Favourite: The Wooden Wall – the story of how a silver mine saved the Greeks during the Persian Wars…I enjoyed doing the research and looking a mineral pics.
Things I’ve Learned
By the way, to put some of these numbers into perspective I also monitor a website about a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle. It was written by my grandmother and is in its 14th printing right now having sold well over a million copies and been translated into several languages. Her website receives between 1,500 and 3,000 visits per day!!! It has gotten 266,125 visits since October 1, 2012 and 1,471,484 pageviews. If I ever get too cocky about getting a measly 2,530 visits I just think about her website and that helps restore me to an even keel.
All in all I am very happy with how being a geology blogger has gone and am extremely happy to be part of the EGU blog network. I think blogging has been an enriching experience that has allowed me to connect with fellow geoscientists from across the globe and expand my network. Not only that, it has allowed me to hone my writing skills, and given me a soapbox of sorts from which to expound my views on geoscience communication and outreach. I certainly intend to continue blogging in the future and I thank any readers who do stop by for your encouragement and support.
Matt
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