Dedicated Follower Of Stats

Hello, my name is Christopher Elam, and I am addicted to my website stats.

I first got hooked on checking my site stats when I moved www.returnofjetman.com to a new server in 2007 (insert subtle plug here). I'd never bothered with them that much until I had them right at my fingertips. Then, it became hard to resist checking them all the time.

When I began the OWARI blog in January of last year, Blogger didn't have a feature for compiling stats, at least as far as I knew. I registered an account for a service, but I didn't get around to implementing it. I eventually started using Google's webmaster tools, but that was far from perfect in giving me the picture of what was getting hits on a blog as obscure as this one.

At some point a few months ago, Blogger introduced a "Stats" feature. I'm not sure exactly when - it says May, but it doesn't show any views for me until July. In any event, these Stats give a clearer picture of what is getting the most views on this blog. It doesn't fully address the issue of audience, because it doesn't account for my Facebook syndication of these posts or those folks who read via feeds. But it does give me an idea of what the most popular entries on this blog are. The results are sometimes surprising.

Right now, I'm going to take a look at a few of the most popular entries on this blog. As stated above, this only takes into account views since approximately July. That certainly shortchanges every post prior to that, including the entirety of 2009. But even with that caveat, and the wildly erratic functionality at times, I think this list is pretty indicative of what is driving people here.

• Superman And Batman - STARKERS : This isn't really a surprise, is it? It shouldn't be after the explosion of hits it generated. That has quieted down a lot over the last few days, but the entry still gets a few views every single day. A side effect is that it has also bumped up views of this entry linked in its body. But not nearly enough, so get clicking!
  
  
• Blue Behemoth's Bulletin Board : I love that this entry is popular, but I can't quite figure out why. It has more views than any other post devoted to either my superhero universe or my collaborations with Kabuki Katze. In fact, it's by a wide margin. What makes this entry so special? Is it the term "bulletin board"? That is my only guess at this point.
  
  
• Batman's Thoughts On Love : If we're being realistic here, this is probably the most viewed post on this blog. I mean, it's over a year old, and it drives in visitors every week. Just think how many of those happened before the Stats started recording them. But really, one look at it should explain why. Everyone loves Batman.
  
  
• Devo - Something For Everybody (2010) : This is my review of Devo's latest album. Interestingly, it is not people searching for "Devo" that garners this entry most of its attention, but people searching specifically for that new album. This is by far the most popular piece I've written in the music category. Recording industry, take note!
  
  
• SD Battle Japan : I have written about the Japanese superhero show BATTLE FEVER J a lot more on this blog than I would have expected. This particular post is the highest ranked of those discussions. I gather it turns up pretty highly in image searches for the series. I expect that means a lot of people are saving the GIF. Pretty funny when you consider it is one of the earliest examples of my attempts to learn how to color via Photoshop.
  
  
• Naomi Morinaga Kicks It Old School : Lost in the hubbub of the recent Superman/Batman post is the popularity of this entry. It has been steadily climbing every day, to the point where it's in the Top 10! This despite the fact that Toei apparently made a claim to get the video embedded in the body of the post removed from Youtube.
  
  
• Super Robot Red Baron : This particular Japanese superhero show has been afforded a U.S. DVD release, and is in fact now available ridiculously cheap through a bargain label. That's exactly the sort of thing that will increase the traffic, especially when it's something that is bit of a fringe thing for most of the usual suspects.
  

The only thing I truly take away from this list is that people that arrive here are interested in a lot of different subjects. I guess I'll keep doing what I'm doing and hope people find me!