WordPress’ infamous helper monkeys work feverishly to respond to bloggers upset about all the stupid changes.
Let the virtual fireworks over the weirdest city skyline on virtual Earth explode! It’s time for the WordPress generated Year in Blogging those of us who have carved out a piece of their turf for our own receive at the end of every year. As usual, mine is chock full of lies, damned lies and juicy statistics which make me laugh at the things WordPress believes should be important to bloggers. And of course, as I do every year, I’m going to share those insights with you, whether you want to see my report card or not…
The line for spankings starts over there…
Let’s take a look at those “Crunchy Numbers”….
I got about 7,000 more views this year than last, but still couldn’t graduate from the Sydney Opera House as my comparative. My “busiest day” fell just short of my all time record of 399/403 (depending on if DST is in effect or not) from 11/30/12, and came about in a way I’ll get into shortly…
I had no idea I posted even close to 11 days in a row at any point this year. Oddly enough, my longest streak from last year (10 days) was also in June. I have no explanation for that whatsoever… but as you can see, checking up on my blog on Sundays and Tuesdays is usually a waste of time…. well hell, any day you check up on my blog is probably a waste of your time…
Now we make it to the truly useless portion of this report… the most viewed posts! If you don’t know the story behind my “Home Schooling” post yet, please refer to the bottom of my sidebar. Anyway, it blew past “Playing Possum” this year as my most “viewed” post of all time… and most of those views never made it past the picture of the fat man. A temporary spike of Kool Aid Man searches managed to slip “Oh Yeah!!!” onto the list this year despite it having never been popular outside of my followers before. “I Wanna Go Home” is the third to last post from my infamous Millionaire Journey series, and got caught up in a story that went viral because the author of said story cited that post as the source of a picture of a crowded airplane she used in the article (even though I just scavenged the photo off Google Images), and apparently a lot of sheep clicked…
A plane full of my followers headed to the Sydney Opera House…
Fourth and fifth on the list are a couple of Retro TV Ad tributes to good old beer commercials of days gone by that get slow but steady views throughout the year… and maybe, just maybe, people actually bother to read them as well!
So one of the sites the viral article appeared on which gave me a short-lived spike in hits was the most popular referrer to my blog over the entire year… that makes me feel better. With a small order shakeup, this list is actually pretty much the same as last year, only with the viral site taking the place of the Boston sports message board some idiot spammed with one of my posts last year. And I continue to smile at the staying power of amigurumi Rainbow Donkey and the folks he brings to me through Squirrel Picnic after almost two and a half years now!
And finally, the section you were all waiting for… the folks who talk too much!!!
I came ohhhhhh so close to having my fourth straight new top commenter, but Aunt Sharon (2012’s winner) just nudges out Marilyn for the top spot. Trisha would have been a contender had we discovered each other before late February this year. Easy cracks the list for the first time, and Draliman slips a bit from his third place finishes the last two years, but keeps his diagonal gravatar on the board! And my comic lampooning the WordPress new editor fiasco gets the overall commenting award, of course!
And that’s everything from a numbers perspective! I’m proud of the restraint I showed in not going into a lot of boring, gory detail this year. If you’re truly a glutton for punishment, I’ll have my yearly “Best of The Nest” post coming up sometime tomorrow for your perusal…
Sigh….. Is this year over with yet?
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
The people who know me without the assistance of the internet would be surprised to find I’ve made a list of folks who talk too much. I’m generally seen as the quiet (i.e. boring) one!
I’m off now to visit my own stats, which I usually never pay any attention to. I probably didn’t rate the Sydney Opera House so I’m curious as to what’s below that. The restroom at a bus stop maybe? 🙂
I’m one of those internet yakkers as well who would be the one in the corner petting the dog at a party. I feel so much more at ease talking to people when we’re not face to face… at least people I don’t already know.
Restroom at a bus stop would be awesome! But the lowest venue I’ve seen reported is San Francisco cable car… which should entitle that blog to a year’s supply of Rice a Roni!
omd omd I’m #4! is there a prize? and maybe a check? I’ve got no report by now from wp…. maybe they furgot me?
Maybe I can have Regis send you a fake check like he did me to the tune of 87 million euros. I hope you have your report by now… they’re interesting to look at…
Mark Twain!
I am shocked that the Opera House didn’t add a dozen shows packed with Evil Squirrel Fans in 2015.
I too had fewer visitors this year too. They only came to see Vlad then left. Oh well.
I will have to work on Evil Squirrel the Opera for all of those standing room only crowds to enjoy next year. I wonder if Buster can sing soprano?
You know how those internet users are… they just like to see cute, and Vlad is too cute…
I got 7 Louvres this year. It was exciting! If only that meant anything.
So the Louvre is what I have to strive for… that would be more appropriate a venue for a cartoonist than an opera house. Perhaps you could hang your unicorn next to the Mona Lisa?
Pingback: The 2015 Cutter Awards | The Cutter Rambles
Congrats on a good year! You JUST missed out on a second consecutive Cutter Award.
That just makes me want to strive even harder for third place next year. I believe in following trends…
Here’s to a good – but not great – year then!
Mediocrity is a goal I should be able to meet…
I’m proud of you. Eleven days straight AND you work for a living! I’m glad we’re going on vacation on Monday. I need to see something other than this computer screen 🙂 Despite the utter drivel spread by WordPress whose employees obviously do NOT blog, I have a lot of fun and you’re one of the funnest of the people on my radar. Hang on in there. You brighten my virtual world and make me laugh.
I could only imagine how much I would blog if I didn’t have a full time job. And since I’m off work until next Friday, I just might set next year’s longest streak right off the bat. I actually have a couple of stray topics I might talk about on days I don’t usually post something..
Thank you for the kind words, and I too enjoy your unique sense of humor and perspective on the important and not so important things in life!
Whew, I just slipped in at number five. I’ll have to do better in 2016! This is a wake up call. I wonder if this is how celebs feel when they drop off the bottom of the “sexiest bum” list.
You’re number 2 on my commentator list with 192 comments (but I don’t post as much as you)!
Well that settles that then… my one and only resolution for the new year is to top your list in 2016! That is a goal I can strive to much easier than hoping to be named the Sexiest Blogger Alive, which I’ve somehow never won….
Me neither. Somehow we got missed off the short list. I wonder who we have to talk to about that…
So glad to see that Rainbow Donkey continues to send friends your way. How cool! Everyone loves that donkey. We should be mighty proud. We’re sharing RD around the world one click at a time… he’s kinda like a virus that way (a virus of cuteness!).
It’s a unicorn pandemic! And there isn’t anything the World Health Organization can do about it!
This was much more interesting than mine! My top viewed (but least commented) post was about vajajays…people are so predictable. 🙂
I am obviously blogging about the wrong things! The internet loves their ‘gina posts…
Despite the title, mine was a serious medical post but I guess the tags brought everyone in. 🙂 Maybe we should put it genitalia tags in every post? That would be an evil squirrel thing to do…
OMP – that is totally awesome my friend. I love it! I haven’t gotten my numbers yet. What are they skipping out on this piggy or what? Who do I need to call? Stomps off. XOXO – Bacon
You might want to frisk Don Juan before he leaves for the year… he might have your report in his back pocket!
That’s where that report went to! His crap never stops does it? XOXO – Bacon
All right! Suffer in your jocks everyone! I win! 😀
And you have a nice early start on repeating this year!
Having deleted all my posts, all my stats will be at zero. However, I will be blogging again this coming year, having been given permission to resume, providing the posts have approval of two specified sisters before I publish. So much for being spontaneous. Oh well, it’s better than not being allowed to write at all!
I was wondering what happened to your blog! I’d hate to think how little I’d have on my blog if I had to get pre-approval before posting… probably just an empty home page!
There were a couple of complaints about my last post back in May so I ended up deleting everything in June under orders from the then Prioress. We now have a new Prioress and I’m moving to a branch house, so I can write again.