It's traditional at this time of year to look back over the year and pull out some highlights. I thought I'd take the easy route here and publish a list of the ten most viewed articles published this year. However, I realised that this would be skewed in favour of older articles. So, in an effort to bring balance, I decided to look at the posts I'd published in the last 18 months and highlight the ten most viewed. And when I come to do that in a years time, the last half of 2012 will get its fair crack of the whip. Does that make sense?
Anyway, here they are (with the most popular at the top of the list)...
- NOTE: SAS Global Forum (SGF) 2012 Call For Papers, 18-Oct-2011
- NOTE: Keyboard Shortcuts in the SAS Enhanced Editotor, 23-Aug-2011
- NOTE: Booked for SAS Global Forum 2012, 03-Jan-2012
- NOTE: DS2. Data Step Evolved?, 02-May-2012
- NOTE: Upgrading to SAS 9.3, 30-Aug-2011
- NOTE: SAS Global Forum 2012 - Update, 24-Apr-2012
- NOTE: SAS Global Forum 2012 - Workflow Management, 24-Apr-2012
- NOTE: SAS Global Forum 2012 - Futures, 25-Apr-2012
- NOTE: Enterprise Guide 5.1 - Now Shipping!, 27-Feb-2012
- Testing - Peer Reviews, 13-Dec-2011
The fact that nine out of ten of the posts have a "NOTE:" prefix immediately shows that the posts about SAS syntax and functionality got many more hits than those about software development best practice (I don't use the "NOTE:" prefix for posts that are not specific to SAS software). That disappoints me a little because my aim for the blog is to spread that best practice. However, I enjoy researching and writing the articles, and I can see from the stats that the "best practice" articles do have a decent amount of readership. I could guess that they don't match Google search strings so readily as those with SAS syntax within them.
I hope you had a good Christmas. Here's to a healthy and happy New Year.
I wouldn't be too disappointed about "NOTE:" vs other posts. First, about 75% of your posts are "NOTE:," so even if the quality and usefulness of your blogs are uniformly distributed, you would expect 7 or 8 of your Top 10 to be "NOTE:" postings. Secondly, as you point out, a fair proportion of your blog traffic probably comes from internet searches, as opposed to regular readers, and people are more likely to be searching for topics covered in your "NOTE:" posts.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year! In case you want to see my Top 2012 posts, they are here: http://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2013/01/03/12-tips-for-sas-statistical-programmers/
Solid observations, Rick. Thanks.
DeleteYou spotted a metric that I hadn't considered or taken into account: the proportion of NOTE/non-NOTE posts that I actually create!
I'll be sending a recommendation for your blog to my primary client's users at the end of the month :)