2011 was a big year for this blog, with more visits than I ever could have dreamed. As you may have guessed, I’m a bit of a geek, so let’s crunch some numbers, courtesy of Google Analytics.
OVERALL
Visits: 42,979
Unique Visits: 38,775 (89.53% new visitors)
Pageviews: 70,632
DEMOGRAPHICS
Top 5 Cities
The second entry here is almost entirely due to interest in my redesign of the DC Metro Map.
1. New York: 2,291 visits
2. Washington, DC: 2,037
3. Chicago: 1,139
4. San Francisco: 864
5. Portland, OR: 788
Top 5 Browsers Used
1. Chrome: 13,746 (31.98%)
2. Firefox: 12,111 (28.18%)
3. Safari: 7,338 (17.07%)
4. Internet Explorer: 5,449 (12.68%)
5. Mozilla Compatible Agent: 2,931 (6.82%)
Wow, Chrome is getting popular these days! Nice to see IE at four.
Top 5 Operating Systems
1. Windows: 22,789 (53.02%)
2. Macintosh: 14,029 (32.64%)
3. iPhone: 2,474 (5.76%)
4. iPad: 1,694 (3.94%)
5. Android: 935 (2.18%)
However, combine the three Apple products for a total of 18,197 visits (42.34%) from MacOS or iOS devices – impressive.
TOP FIVE MOST VIEWED ARTICLES
Leaving out the home page and the For Sale page (which aren’t really articles, per se), these were my five most visited articles in 2011.
5. High Speed Train Routes of France: 1,935 page views (2.74%)
4. Amtrak Subway Map: 2,897 (4.10%)
3. Washington DC Metro Diagram Redesign: 2,939 (4.16%)
2. Interstates as Subway Diagram: 2011 Version: 13,629 (19,30%)
1. U.S. Routes as a Subway Map: 20,170 (28.56%)
What makes the number 1 article’s numbers even more impressive was that it was only posted on December 17, while the number 2 article was posted in February!
TOP 5 REFERRING SITES
So where did those visitors come from? 8,598 visitors came here directly. After that, these were the top five referring sites:
5. The Huffington Post: 1,739 visits
4. Autoblog.com: 2,256
3. Reddit: 2,492
2. Laughing Squid: 2,676
1. Tumblr: 2,681
At a glance, I would say most of these referrals have to do with the U.S. Routes Subway Map project: these sites drove an insane amount of traffic my way in late December.
TOP 5 SEARCH TERMS
Internet search doesn’t drive a huge amount of traffic to the site (only 11% of total visits) – it really is word of mouth and referrals that bring people here. That said, here’s the top five keywords that people use to find me:
5. washington dc metro map: 61 visits
4. amtrak subway map: 65
3. cambooth: 118
2. (not provided) – damn you, Google!: 222
1. cameron booth: 548
Many of the other search terms are just variants of these, including people who charmingly search with “http://www.cambooth.net” as their search term – bless ‘em.
That’s it! If you joined me in 2011 – thank you! And hopefully I’ll continue to have interesting projects and ideas to post up here in 2012!
Cameron Booth
Portland, Oregon
Comments
Early last year (Jan 2011 in fact) I was planning a trip to the US. On a previous journey, I drove from Santa Barbara up to Vancouver Island and back, finding it a bit lonely really. Also, the maps were hard to follow and the US does not see fit to put many (or any) signs on their secondary highways. So I thought to try Amtrak.
But did I have problems sorting where their trains went! It took hours of pawing over their timetable, coupled with a US highway map. The Americans are particularly weak in the passenger train department and the lack of an adequate Amtrak map was symptom. I ended up sending a schematic of the Australian railway network (maybe it was your work?) to Amtrak, suggesting they do something similar. They responded in a polite and friendly manner, but never suggested that you had got one together. I hope they know by now.
Congratulations.
Charles Poynton
80 Edward Ave
St Albans
Christchurch 8013
New Zealand +643 942 2445