State of the Blog Address

Another year has come, and another year has gone. We’re coming up on our 9th anniversary of blogging this year! That is incredible. I can’t believe we’re almost to a DECADE of blogging about video games. I never thought this would go so far for so long, and I have nothing but gratitude in my heart for all of you regulars who consistently stop by to chat about video games with us.

I want to take this opportunity to take a peak into the analytics and data of the blog to highlight some of the particulars. I do not give out most of our analytics, but for the sake of this exercise I’ll share a few. I find this stuff fascinating, and I hope you do too!

Most Popular Posts in 2015

What can we glean from this? People love tech support and turn to the internet to solve problems. That seems about right. The fascinating thing is how the older posts, namely the two from 2013 did so well. People tend to look for specific games and specific terminology. Many of of the top 100 posts visited this year were related to FFIXV. I credit the fact that most of my titles used the words, “FFXIV” and then something else like “end-game dungeons” or “insert specific quest name here.” FFXIV has also been, consistently, one of the better choices for MMORPGs in 2015.

Traffic Channels (where it comes from)

Direct (Type in URL or Bookmark): 44.43%
Organic Search: 40.48%
Referral: 10.65%
Social: 4.37%

I love to see that almost half of our traffic comes from regulars, or people who check our blog on a daily basis. That direct traffic number is awesome. Organic search (Google) is pretty solid. We’ve always had about 40% come from search engines. Referrals are links to us from other websites, and social is pretty obvious. I definitely want to improve our social presence, but it’s crazy to think that even thought it’s only 4.37% that still represents tens of thousands of visitors. I definitely could ramp up our social and see big gains there.

Where is Blogging Trending?

Since the great crash of 2013, blogging in general has brought in far fewer numbers. We actually managed significant growth this year compared to last year, but overall haven’t seen the numbers of our heyday. Last year I bemoaned the fact that blogging has become an even smaller niche medium than it was due to the prolific growth of streaming. Yes, traffic is down significantly from where it was back in the day of Google Reader. I also attribute our overall decline to the decline of the MMO industry.

Interesting Numbers & Facts:

Most Popular Day in 2015: July 29 – 5,916 visitors

Desktop users account for 77.53% of our traffic. Says something about our readers that they aren’t mostly on mobile devices.

Top Referrers: 

  • syncaine.com – 3,028
  • tomshardware.com – 1,800
  • bhagpuss.blogspot.com – 1,540

Thanks go out to those who linked to us this past year. I’m horrible at it myself, but will certainly try to reciprocate the love when possible — even when you link to my thoughts as something you disagree with!

Youtube – In the past 3 months of making videos VERY casually, I’ve seen roughly 2,100 video views. That can and will grow as I make more videos in 2016. My “Keen Plays” collection will grow. I enjoy trying to share my playtime in as many ways as I can.

Advertising & Paying the Bills – We make just barely enough through our Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, and Tips to cover all of our costs. If you want to support our blog, the best way to do that without spending a dime is by using our Amazon Affiliates link when purchasing things you normally buy right on Amazon. We receive a cut and you can support us while doing your normal shopping. We do our best to only link to products and games we believe people should buy. Supporting us in this way means we can review more games faster and keep up the coverage you guys clearly enjoy.

Plan of Attack for 2016

My goal is always to write what I want, about what I want, for no one but myself. I refuse to write about something I don’t want or like just because I think it will bring in more traffic. Instead, I write about what I think people will want to read — what will be interesting to them — while still being something I enjoy. As I mentioned yesterday in my retrospective, I want to do more reviews (timely if possible) on more games. I also want to focus hard on sharing my adventure logs of what’s going on in the MMOs I’m playing. I need to be more specific, which is clearly what people want to read.

Write more. Share more. Relate more. That’s 2016 for me in a nutshell.

  • I think two things stand out in this post and your last one.

    1. Google search for tech support is driving your big traffic spikes. Is regulars continue to log in several times per week, but we are occasionally outweighed by loads of people trying to get a game to work, just like you were before you wrote about it.

    2. I read your top games of 2015 (kinda quick) and they didn’t seem very MMORPG…ish. That’s probably more a statement on these games than you though.

  • The blog has been a muscle memory website for me for close to 5 years now.

    What I mean by this is, sometimes when I am not paying attention I will click the address bar and start typing keen and hit enter and be on the site. Many times I didnt even mean to check the blog at that time, or was actually trying to go to a different site but my muscle memory took over lol.

  • I have Chrome set to open 4 websites every time it loads up. One is Google. One is You. Two others involve bewbs.

    Take from that what you will 😛

  • Really the only gaming blog I read. I check your site daily. Hope you keep it going for years to come. Happy new year!