Though I write for myself and would podcast for a few dozen, I am a statistics freak. So here’s how it looked for the blog and podcast in 2011.<\/p>\n
2011 was the best year ever for visits and for downloads – in spite of me not writing much and me ceding first chair on the show. Lesson? Maybe less of me is more. I won’t give you the full numbers, but the blog peaked when the National Character series was being spread around the past summer, and the podcast has steadily grown.<\/p>\n
Three Moves Ahead started surging in Fall 2010 and this year has climbed to new heights. The final show of the year – which attracted a Battletech audience that had never heard of us – helped push December into new territory with over 30,000 total downloads of the podcast that month. We were on track for a record month before that. The really boring stuff is after the jump, but also some revelations from the search content.<\/p>\n
People in 175 nations stumbled onto FoS at least once, and the podcast was downloaded in 136. The top nations for visitors to the blog are the usual suspects:<\/p>\n
USA
\nUK
\nCanada
\nAustralia
\nGermany
\nNorway
\nSweden
\nNetherlands
\nFrance
\nIreland<\/p>\n
Top podcast audiences are similar. Exact same top four, but then it’s Sweden, Germany, China, Norway, Ireland, Denmark.<\/p>\n
Australian centers of population dominate the city list for blog traffic, probably because Aussies are so concentrated. The following cities all visited over 2000 times.<\/p>\n
London, UK
\nSydney
\nNew York
\nToronto
\nSan Francisco
\nChicago
\nBerlin
\nSeattle
\nPerth
\nBrisbane
\nMelbourne<\/p>\n
Top 10 Canadian cities are not surprises – every major Canadian city plus Burlington, ON – except for Elliot Lake, ON in 8th place and Corner Brook, NL in 10th. I am assuming I have a couple of very dedicated readers in those places.<\/p>\n
For site referrals, Rock Paper Shotgun<\/a> sent THREE TIMES<\/strong> the traffic to FoS that Google did. Some of that traffic is from the posts there but a lot of it from people in the comments pointing to podcasts we did on a topic referenced at the pre-eminent PC gaming blog.<\/p>\n Leaving search engines and social media out of the equation, top ten referring sites were:<\/p>\n RPS The most popular searches that led people to the blog and podcast were, of course, people looking for the blog and podcast. Other than that, visitors find what they want about Civilization, National Characters, Alpha Centauri<\/em>, Hegemony: Philip of Macdeon<\/em>, Star Ruler<\/em>, and a dozen other games.<\/p>\n I get more people looking for Tom Chick (over 2000) and Bruce Geryk (over 1000) than for Rob Zacny (over 50). To Rob’s eternal glory, someone looked for “Rob Goodfellow National Character”. I guess we’re married now. Julian Murdoch barely pops up as a search that brings people here, which probably underlines the power of Gamers with Jobs.<\/p>\n Other names people look for:<\/p>\n Sid Meier (over 500 times, but mostly as part of a game name. Gettysburg<\/em> the most popular of these.) There are the usual interesting searches that make me wonder what someone is looking for.<\/p>\n 1) A Philadelphia visitor came to the blog 4 times looking for the same sentences on my blog. (The ones from the Aztec post<\/a> on how history is not really written by the winners.) Did the visitor just like this phrasing? Were they checking to see if I plagiarized it? Why four times via search?<\/p>\n 2) Eight or nine times a month, somebody comes looking for information on Rome on 640K a Day<\/em>. I wrote a blog post about it over five years ago<\/a>. Nice to see the book is remembered and to see that post still get eyeballs.<\/p>\n 3) Visitors want to know if some people are gay. Of those names searched that I can confirm, none are.<\/p>\n 4) People think that Bruce played 1960: Making of the President<\/em> with Tom, not me<\/a>.<\/p>\n 5) My marital status was of interest to people in Connecticut, New York, Michigan, Seattle and Canberra.<\/p>\n 6) People still want a Hitler mod for Civ 4<\/p>\n
\nQuarter to Three
\nWargamer
\nMetafilter
\nBoard Game Geek
\nMatrix Games
\nSomething Awful forums
\nNo High Scores
\nParadox Forums
\nFog of War Games blog<\/p>\n
\nJon Shafer (over 350 times)
\nBill Abner (over 100 and all of them asking about Warhammer Miniatures)
\nSoren Johnson (over 25 times, and overwhelmingly connected to board games)<\/p>\n