Google Analytics was set up for this blog one year ago today. Take a look at the posts I submitted over the past year to see how traffic has grown in the past 12 months. Since the last related post 2 months ago, the number of countries of origin has increased by 8 to reach 71. Visitors from the top 10 countries of origin came from the United States (53.3%), Canada (4.4%), the United Kingdom (3.7%), Germany (3.3%), India (3.0%), the Netherlands (2.5%), Slovenia (2.1%), France (2.1%), Australia (1.8%), and China (1.5%).
This blog entered a third phase in its life cycle in late-July of this year, when a higher number of visits began to occur on a sustained basis. See the Google Analytics plot of daily visits over the past year that I annotated below. Prior to the current phase, this blog initially experienced a stagnant phase when few visits occurred, as well as a second phase when frequency of visits was all over the map (including days where frequency of visits was extremely limited). The most extreme outliers in this plot are the result of one of my book reviews being tweeted, and a popular series of conference notes that I wrote.
Sweden and Brazil have dropped off the top 10 visiting countries to make room for Slovenia and China. To enter the top 10 in such a short period of time is quite a feat. Drilling down in the analytics, it is apparent that the vast majority of visits from Slovenia were to view my book review of "Amplifying Effectiveness: Collected Essays", edited by Gerald M. Weinberg, James Bach, and Naomi Karten, and the vast majority of visits from China came to view my notes from Global Leadership Summit 2010 (day 1 and day 2), especially my post on the session led by economist Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao.
The top 10 visiting city over the past year was Ljubljana (Slovenia), followed by New York, New York (the United States), San Francisco, California (the United States), London (England), Burbank, California (the United States), Beijing (China), Cambridge, Massachusetts (the United States), Chicago, Illinois (the United States), Los Angeles, California (the United States), and Singapore.
Venezuela continues to lead for the number of pages per visit (8.00), followed by Lithuania (7.00), Bulgaria (4.00), Portugal (3.50), Argentina (2.83), Hungary (2.50), Denmark (2.33), Austria (2.33), Norway (2.17), and France (2.15). Switzerland, Mexico, Greece, and Japan have dropped off the list of top 10 countries according to pages per visit to make room for Lithuania, Bulgaria, Austria, and France.
Visitors from the 71 countries of origin came from 686 cities. Because looking at statistics at the city level involves drilling down in the data to a lower level, it is expected that the top 10 visiting cities will continue to remain in flux. Orthez, France continues to lead as a statistical outlier for the number of pages per visit (17.00), followed by Blue Bell, Pennsylvania (15.00), Caracas, Venezuela (8.00), Shibuya, Japan (8.00), Bartlesville, Oklahoma (8.00), Frisco, Texas (7.00), Southlake, Texas (7.00), Vilnius, Lithuania (7.00), Funchal, Portugal (7.00), and Oakton, Virginia (7.00).
While a cursory glance at the second map overlay above (pages per visit) seems similar to the first (visits), there exist some subtle differences. You might notice that the first map overlay does not show data points across 71 countries. This is due to the fact that data points do not display until a certain number of visits are reached. This might reduce clutter, but I would much prefer that all data points be plotted. The second map overlay compensates somewhat because it shows pages per visit. For example, a data point for Lagos, Nigeria is displayed whereas in the first map overlay activity from that location is not represented.
In a recent post, I commented on the popularity of my posts on running, which I find somewhat humorous due to the subtitle of this blog ("musings on business and technology"). Here are links to the top 10 posts, in order of number of visits: Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, New Book Review: "Manage Your Project Portfolio", Liquibase in the Enterprise - Part 2, Liquibase in the Enterprise - Part 1, Switching from ASICS to Brooks, New Book Review: "Amplifying Your Effectiveness", New Book Review: "Employees First, Customers Second", Global Leadership Summit 2010 - Day 1: Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao, Global Leadership Summit 2010 - Day 1, and New Book Review: "Strategy Safari".