This time of year, bloggers often look over the various stats for their blog. As a matter of interest:
- This is my most “shared” post: Does your church make people jump through hoops? Stop it! Although it only got a handful of comments after the actual post, it generated responses on a social media site, lots of shares, and seemed to strike a nerve (in a positive way) with people.
- This is one of my top “viewed” posts that drives considerable traffic to my blog: Jesus Calling? I think the only reason this brings me so much traffic is that there are simply not many reviews of Jesus Calling out there. Do a google search – not much comes up. (This surprises me. Since this is such a top selling devotional, you’d think there would be many reviews available.) I can also see if the links I share are clicked on, and mainly the second two links are clicked on – and not the first by Tim Challies that addresses the underlying theological concerns. This sordof proves the point of some of my concerns.
- Finally, the faith and doubt quotes ( quotes, more quotes, and even more quotes ) are also among my top viewed posts, and search terms for quotes on faith and doubt bring considerable traffic to my blog.
I find it both interesting and helpful to review what people read on my two blogs, and the results are often surprising. I think we don’t always know what regular readers are interested in, but if we get a lot of readers from Google, then a very small change in Google ranking can make an enormous difference to the visit numbers.
Yes, stats can be fascinating and surprising. Responses can be unexpected too. A couple times I’ve posted something I was worried might come across the wrong way, but it caused no offense at all. And the opposite has happened as well – something I didn’t even think would stir people up – did!