As the year draws to a close, “top something of 2015” started to pop up everywhere—top books, top news, top podcasts, top movies, top Tweets, top articles, you name it.
It’s a year-end tradition.
We can’t help it.
Our brains love lists, a format that gets to the point and helps us organize what otherwise seems overwhelming—namely the online world and information overload. During the holiday season, we are generally busier (and occasionally drunk) so we look for easy-to-digest formats.
Lists also provide reassurance that we did accomplish something over the past twelve months—and the very best of that “something” is here for the world to see.
I will indulge. My turn. Here are a few blog-related highlights for 2015.
This year, the stats were very strange, with a sudden huge drop in traffic late in May. It’s slowly climbing back up but I’m still wondering how and why I broke the Internet last spring. Like the song says, “it must have been something I said”. Or not. I never truly understood statistics—let alone those applied to my tiny corner of the Web—and SEO remains that mysterious science tons of spammers want to improve for me (yes, I ignore them).
I’m still happy with the mobile-friendly theme I adopted last year. I made a few tweaks but nothing major—I focus on readability and frankly, after ten years of blogging, the novelty of editing HTML and PHP files “just because” ran out.
A little while ago, I reorganized the navigation bar, highlighting two broad categories and their associated drop-down menu. Life in Canada has all the immigration-related info, and Life on the Road lists all of our trips plus the Food Around the World section.
Here are the quick stats as of late December 2015:
- 1,708 articles published since October 2006
- 24,542 comments
- 340,605 page views for from January to December 2015
- 205 articles for the entire year of 2015
Users were mostly from:
- Canada
- United States
- India
- United Kingdom
- Philippines
- France
- Australia
- United Arab Emirates
- China
- Singapore
The top queries were:
- Canadian things
- Baby walker Canada
- Entertaining websites
- Chinese sex stories
- Canadian souvenirs
- Group deals
And finally, the top ten most viewed articles in 2015 were:
- 5 Personality Traits of Canadians You May Not Know: Analyzing common characteristics and shared values that bind our multicultural country together.
- Ghostbuster: Where Mark suddenly goes through a phase where he is scared of everything and I’m called to the rescue.
- Rice and Cheese: Bridging French and Chinese cultures in the kitchen.
- Ten Years (Holy Shit!): Feng and I celebrate our ten-year wedding anniversary by having Mark taking pictures of us.
- He Might Be Friendly But I’m Not: Where I do not want the honour of petting your dog.
- Screwed Up! Fixed It! (With a Side of “Lost in Translation”): Where I have to take my driving test again because my license is about to expire, and the examiner speaks a colourful flavour of French.
- Five Myths about Freelancing (Busted!): I am so not working in my pajamas.
- How to Start a World Culinary Journey: How to travel the world and eat food.
- The “Other” Landing Strip: Getting a bikini wax job in Chile and getting addicted to it.
- An Ugly Side of Winter: Not exactly the winter wonderland most foreigners imagine, in pictures.
Most importantly, thank you all for reading and for your support. I could totally write articles without you… but it would suck.
Now let’s get ready for 2016!
“Chinese sex stories”
Uh uh, I think there’s a hidden part of this blog I’ve never heard of!
Merci d’avoir blogué, et d’avoir accompagné de loooongs moments de mes journées ! Internet ne serait pas le même sans ma dose de Zhu !
Je te souhaite une bien belle année 2016 🙂
The best I can explain is that it somehow relates to my very non-sexual experience with Chinese massages!
Moi j’espère que tu continueras à nous faire voyager sur ton blog 😉
Ha, one of my top queries is ‘girlfriend photos xxx’. Makes you wonder what those people make of the blog when they chance upon it. I have been going over my stats also. 2015 was not the best year for the blog but I think I made good headway in a few areas!
Your blog is still young too, it takes time!
Merci!
Je suis pret 🙂
& yeah where are these Chinese Sex Stories?
Well… I did get pregnant and have a Chinese kid, but shhhhhh 😉
And ?
I don’t see the link.
Love your annual statistics blog posts, thank you!! *** Happy 2016 ***
Happy 2016 to you, may your dream come true!
So you’re the one who broke the internet!
That’s pretty awesome that your web site comes up when people search for “entertaining websites.” Definitely a compliment.
Tu veux dire : merci à toi !!!! Pour que le Sénégal entre dans le top 10 de tes visites, je sens qu’il y a du boulot, mais je m’accroche 😉