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Bloggerheads - Year Four

Bloggerheads was born at 10:02am on Friday, December 14, 2001.

This is the fourth annual breakdown of events, bloggage and stats. Here are the first three (just in case you missed them):
Bloggerheads - Year One - December 2002
Bloggerheads - Year Two - December 2003
Bloggerheads - Year Three - December 2004

Number of Posts

2002 - 2,375 posts, approx 8-9 posts each weekday, 1.61MB of raw .TXT data
2003 - 3,055 posts, approx 10-11 posts each weekday, 3.11MB of raw .TXT data
2004 - 2,437 posts, approx 12-13 posts each weekday, 3.15MB of raw .TXT data
2005 - 752 posts, approx 2-3 posts each weekday, 11.5MB of raw .HTML data

A trickier count this year, due to the change in platform. There's also been a change in the way that I blog.

Bloggerheads upgraded to Movable Type in late 2004. The old format published a day's output on one page, while MT generates a new page for each and every post. The tendency in such a situation is to post less, but put more into each post. As a result, I'm writing more, but I'm publishing less frequently.

It should also be noted that this data does not take into account the added bloggage for Anne Milton and Backing Blair.

Number of Images

2002 - 762 photoshopped images
2003 - 379 photoshopped images
2004 - 498 photoshopped images
2005 - 332 photoshopped images

Thes best images of 2005 have been added to my photoshopping gallery, along with a whole new category.

Last year I said the following: There's also a range of images that I've produced over the last few weeks that I'm not allowed to show you yet. These are even better. Hang in there.

Yes, I was talking about the first drafts of the Backing Blair posters, and this one - the main one that we managed to get out and about in London on the side of a 48-sheet poster-van is a shoe-in for Picture Of The Year.

It was also noted in the 2004 report that; (T)here's been far less nonsense and far more comment in (my photoshopping). In fact, many of these pictures were created as part of a campaign or part of a Flash show that was part of a campaign.

Little has changed this past year, apart from the fact that I've produced less images and more Flash. Speaking of which, here's a new list:

Number of Flash Shows

2002 - 0 flash shows
2003 - 1 flash show
2004 - 5 Flash shows
2005 - 10 Flash shows

Don't expect an increase in the coming year; The World According To Leo Blair has pretty much wiped me out for now.

Number of Visitors

2002 - 101,302 unique visitors to the core weblog
2003 - 294,442 unique visitors to the core weblog
2004 - 449,201 unique visitors to the core weblog
2005 - 718,196 unique visitors to the core weblog

There is new tracking to go with the new publishing format. There are also many more visitors to individual posts. If we count people who only look at individual posts as visitors to the weblog, the actual figure is well over a million.

On an average weekday, the core weblog reaches 1,900-2,200 people. Two notable peaks were:

27 Jan 2005 (10,301 unique visitors to the core weblog) - primarily due to this post being the top search result for 'crazy frog' while they had those ads on TV all day... Every. Single. Day.

07 May 2005 - (44,410 unique visitors to the core weblog) - the Saturday following the general election.

The latter completely destroyed the previous record of approx 15,000 in a day.

The Army of the Core Faithful - visiting every weekday without fail, usually more than once - has grown in number from 90 (in 2002) to well over 200 (in 2003) to just over 300 (in 2004) to a *smidgen* under 400 in 2005. Blessings go out to each and every one of you (and your cotton socks).

Daily peaks have changed to match my latest blogging patterns. I no longer blog like a madman each and every morning before 9:30am. We're now dealing with more of a gentle hill than a mountain, with its peak at 3 or 4pm GMT.

Last year there were approximately 500 unique visitors who accessed the site via the gsi.gov.uk or parliament.uk servers. This year, there were well over 1,000.

Referrers

The biggest referrer this year is Google, who have sent 553,141 unique visitors my way (obviously not all to the core weblog). Yahoo sent me 176,783 unique visitors, and MSN sent me 45,919.

The top web site/page referrer is The London Underground Song which, despite being down for most of the year, still managed to send more people to the core weblog than any individual website (21,410 in all).

The Top 10 search queries of 2005 were:
star wars
crazy frog
mustard man
page 3 girls
london underground song
m*a*s*h
bum
mash
page 3
porn

The search result that earned the most traffic - 'star wars' - brought in 225,085 visitors.

(Note - These visitors are mostly visiting the static pages in my photoshopping gallery and the Star Wars Photoshopping Project; they are not part of the weblog traffic count above. Ditto for project numbers below.)

2002 project highlights/updates - The M*A*S*H Quiz reached 45,231 people in 2002, 37,788 people in 2003, 32,940 people in 2004 and 49,401 people in 2005. It's still tick-tick-ticking over.... in fact, the new and healthier search results on this have led to a new peak.

2003 project highlights/updates - JPEG Baby reached 93,745 people in 2003. In 2004, it reached 148,892 people. In 2005, it reached 167,498 people. And *still* no record deal. Ho-hum. The Star Wars Photoshopping Project reached 42,279 people in 2003 and 50,103 in 2004. In 2005, it reached 131,265 people. Search results account for the growth.

2004 project highlights/updates - The Happy Poster Project reached 60,863 unique visitors in 2004. In 2005, it reached a mere 32,487. Page 3 - Model Propaganda: The Sun, The Girls, The Truth reached 40,137 unique visitors in 2004. This year, it reached 112,749. Search results. Again. It's still 3rd in Google for 'page 3 girls' and also enjoying the fruits of many model-specific searches.

Top Projects from 2005

Backing Blair (OFFSITE)
265,420 unique visitors during the election campaign period
480,035 unique visitors overall
This was the main project of the year. I spent four months developing and building it (in conjunction with Balders and Wibbler) and then another four months getting over it. Basically, we aimed to halve Blair's majority. One might be tempted to say 'mission accomplished', but our full mission was 'Labour in. Blair Out' - the job's only half-done. We're now back on deck with two new videos; Not Over By a Long Shot and The World According To Leo Blair.

Please note - the 'Backing Blair' traffic figures do *not* include the traffic figures for the following (hosted at the same site):

The London Underground Song (OFFSITE)
Lots and lots and lots and lots of unique visitors
Hard to track, this one... as it hasn't been live on the same server from start to finish. Also, it has 'escaped' to many other sites, and I don't have access to their stats. As a stand-alone MP3 file, it was attracting 1,000 downloads a day, but as a flash music video, it started drawing up to 30,000 visitors a day. It attracted a quarter of a million individual web users in a fortnight at its original location before the host had a minor fit. I showed it to one of the 'special projects' chaps at a major record label in order to make my case for the use of Flash to promote music online, but he couldn't get past the fact that the song was about London, and therefore had 'limited appeal'. ("But I'm not talking about the song, I'm talking about its promotion!" "Yes, but you can only promote it to people who live in London." Arggghhh!)

WMD Hunt (OFFSITE)
Created in conjunction with Mushybees, this little election offering was kindly hosted by Spinon and contributed to the 208,000 unique visits they generated during the election campaign period. It is currently 4th in Google if you're seeking UK-specific information about 'wmd', and could do even better with a simple change to the Page Title.

The Anne Milton weblog
37,330 unique visitors
The full story of this very special weblog can be read here.

Star Wars: The Musical Tribute (OFFSITE)
18,812 unique visitors
I started off wondering what would be a good piece of music for a slide show of The Star Wars Photoshopping Project when Don't Stop Believin' - and this idea - got stuck in my head... then stayed there for 1 year, 25 days, 20 hours and 41 minutes until I finally got around to making it a reality. It serves as a starter for Murdoch Watch should I even get around to making that a reality.

Almost there, folks... here's the perennial target list:

Did I appear on the front page of a broadsheet newspaper this year? Yes. One down... but don't get your hopes up for anything much beyond this.

Did I complete my novel? No. Haven't touched the bloody thing since carving the framework two years ago. I now use that to get to sleep at nights. ("Right stop thinking about Blair/Bush/Uzbekistan... how does Frank get from the external vent to the bottom of the shaft without doing himself a serious injury?")

Did I get a record deal? No. However... something significant has changed on this front. That project that's been simmering on the backburner for well over a decade was (theoretically) limited to a Christmas release because of the whole 'novelty' issue.... but now we have a robust 'real tune' ringtone market where novelty is king. All I have to do is take the demo I have, produce an animation for it, then plug this into a delivery system or come to an agreement with a provider. But I've got other fish to fry first...

Did I finish my SEO book? No, but now I'm being chased by an agency, that may change... plus, I've got some kick-arse case studies to add from this past year.

OK, we're ready to wrap this up with...

What's coming next year?

Well, it was supposed to be ready a few months ago, but it's a big beastie and it will take a while longer to sort out. I'm on the case.

Cheers all.

UPDATE - Ooh, look! A new weblog with clearly stated influences. That reminds of something I forgot to do last year, and nearly forgot to do this year. If you have started (or re-started) blogging in the past year because of stuff going on in and around Bloggerheads, drop me a line and I'll knock up a list for the record. (Later. Christmas first. Perhaps an arrest or two.)

Posted by Manic on December 14, 2005 10:02 AM in the category Updates

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