The End of the Year Extravaganza Part II // A Statistical Analysis

7 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!! It’s hard to believe that just one week from today I’ll be sitting around the tree with my family all together.  I honestly can’t wait.

But anyways, today’s the 2nd day of blogmas… if you missed part one (Books of 2017) make sure you head over and check it out!

Today, we’re going to be taking a look through my blog stats section, because I always manage to find interesting, surprising facts there.

My Top Blog Posts

1. The Book Blogger Awards

I’m super excited with the response I got from my book blogger awards this past year! It was the first time running it, and so I have to say that I’ll 100% do it again next year.  I mean, there were so many fabulous bloggers recognized and I met so many new people that it made all the work work it.

2. Author Interview with Hugh Roberts

Hugh is both a blogger and an author, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview him earlier this year. It was super super fun to do, and a lot of you guys obviously thought so too because it got a lot of attention!

3. My (Not So) Perfect Summer Reads

If y’all are sitting curled up in your rooms under 50 blankets dreaming of summer right now, this might be just the post for you.  For a Top 5 Wednesday post this year, I wrote about books that I love to read over the summer, and although they weren’t your quintessential summer classics, I still really liked this post

4. Why are YA Characters so Young

It makes me kind of sad to see this, because right before I went on hiatus my blog stats were essentially at their peak (technically, my hiatus announcement post should be on this list, but that seems sort of stupid so I’m ignoring it), and I just let it all slip away.  This post was super controversial, mostly because the definition of “Young Adult” isn’t very clear, but anyways I super enjoyed writing this post.

5. Book Trends that Need to Stop

This post was fun to write, and I think the reason it got so many views was because it’s super relatable.  I mean, who can’t think of half a hundred different book tropes that drive them UP THE WALL but they see it absolutely everywhere and the whole situation is just painful.  (Not you… oh… okay then…) Anyways, if you need more things to get annoyed about, check out my list of aggravating book trends.

Best Friends

okay, so technically all of the people I’m about to list are not my best friends, but they should be, because they referred people to my blog SO MANY TIMES over the course of this year.  They certainly at least deserve some acknowledgement, because without them, my blog certainly wouldn’t be as successful as it is today.  Hopefully this post will allow me to repay the favor a tiny bit.

1. First off, not really a human being, but I got a ton of google and twitter based traffic this year.  Last year, I didn’t have ANYTHING from either of these places, so it’s exciting to see that I’m moving up in the search results a little bit.
2. Teacher of YA is one of my absolute favorite YA blogs, and she gave me SO MUCH TRAFFIC over the course of this year. That means so much coming from such an incredible human being so THANK YOU!
3. Cait @ Paper Fury also was a big referrer. If you haven’t read her blog (or seen that she’s publishing a book) yet, you need to check her out. like now.
4. ISLA!!! Technically her referring came from her old blog, but we’ll ignore that fact and just link A Whisper of Ink, which is super incredibly amazing and overwhelmingly beautiful and needs to be followed by everyone.
5. Ashleigh is another blogger who I respect so much and has such a pretty layout. She totally deserves all of your follows, so head over and read her blog.

The Search Bar

(cue ominous music)

Like I said earlier, I got a lot of traffic from searches.  But, oddly, not all of the things people wrote in google are what you would expect when, say, looking for a book blog. So here are some of the weirdest things that people searched for, and then found my blog as a result.

“no picture when i post my url on social media”

I think I might have written a post on choosing a URL, and another on pictures, but I’m not sure why they ended up together? Like at all? but I hope this searcher found what they were looking for.

“hotvromance and aex”

ummm… okeee…. I think the only place where I even mention romance on my blog is that I don’t read it, but once again, they found my blog.  Without even spelling words right.

“the original title of the story was the short night and quit of love in la in your judgment which title is more appropriate which tire do you prefer why dagoberto gilb”

I did write a review on Love in LA, so at least I can understand what this poor soul was doing on my website. And it seems pretty clear that they were just trying to find an answer to their homework assignment. But I don’t have a good answer for them, so they’re going to have to keep searching.

Around the World

This is my absolute favorite stat, which is why I saved it for last.  The coolest thing about writing a blog is that people from all over the world can read it, and they do.  I had traffic from 114 different countries, which is almost half of all the countries in the world (I mean, half of those might have been spam, but we can ignore that for now).  The most were the US and UK, which isn’t surprising, but Canada, India, and Australia did their part too.

(I love this map.  It’s beautiful)