In the right-hand sidebar there are two lists of TheSupercargo.com’s most popular posts. (If you are reading this on a computer or a tablet. If you’re reading on a phone you’ll have to scroll down.) During 2023 the list showed the five posts published in 2022 that attracted most interest. Below was another list with the top of the pops six posts published before 2022. Here we are now at the beginning of another year and it’s time to update both.
But there’s a problem and it’s name is Google.
Statistics
If you look back at my previous posts on this subject (links at the bottom of the page), you’ll see I use Google Analytics to give me statistics on my visitors and their activity on the site.
In the middle of 2023 Google chose to change how they collect and present this information. The change called for webmasters to update their websites. I did so, but I obviously didn’t do it right, because I find I have stats only from mid-April.
Also, there is a significant drop in the number of recorded visitors for 2023 that can’t be explained simply by the missing months. It must be down to the new way of counting. Hopefully the new system excludes the bot visits that I could see were inflating my earlier statistics. Still, it makes comparing year on year impossible.
Instead let me get straight to the top of the pops posts.
It starts with Colleen
Of the 28 posts I published in 2023, far and away the most visited post was my review of Colleen Hoover’s romance It Ends With Us. It received 103 visits from people who took, on average, a little less than 30 seconds to realise I didn’t like the book before they clicked away.
The second most popular post was a writer’s craft piece about Character Building with Lajos Egri. That was opened by 31 visitors who, sadly, spent only about 20 seconds each reading it.
More gripping, apparently, was my third-placed post, You Are You and That’s Okey, a photo essay that held the attention of 12 visitors for more than a full minute each.
For the rest of this top ten, see below.
Older posts
Among the older posts, as last year, are a few that continue to attract readers year after year. The Brussels Parakeets post with 69 visitors and the Brussels Book Boxes post with 67, in particular, but also my review of Hilary Mantel’s historical epic (53 visitors).
However the top post last year was my article about the Jamestown Walking Tour that Mrs SC and I took in Accra, Ghana. I published that article in September 2020, but last year it was opened by 99 people who spent an average of 1½ minutes reading it.
The second most popular older item was another perennial, the Gothenburg Disco Fire published in 2018. Last year 78 people opened that post and spent nearly a minute on average reading it.
In third place was my post from 2015 about Antiques and memories in my home town, Brighton. That was opened by 49 people who spent an average of 2½ minutes reading.
Again, you’ll find the full top ten below, and the top five in the right-hand column for at least the next six months. (Once I have twelve month’s worth of statistics under the new system, I may revist and update this display.)
TheSupercargo’s Most Popular Posts in 2022
Posts published in 2023
Posts published before 2023
