I’ve become a bit of a statistic geek with the blog. I check into the blog’s stats page a few times a day and not only do I like to see how many visitors I’ve had, but I also like to see where they’ve come from. Most visitors are from UK or USA but there are people from all over the world. Today, for instance, people in Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, India, Germany, Canada, Singapore and Ireland have viewed the site. Some days there are countries I haven’t even heard of but I can trace them on the map … so I guess you might say my stats obsession is educational!
I recently added a Top Posts link on the blog page so you can always see what are the current favourite posts. What’s of great use to me in promoting the blog is being able to view what people have entered in search engines: today people have searched ‘Abdul Yaseen’, ‘harlequin squash recipe’ and ‘Bill’s Richmond’ among other things. This helps me understand what attracts people to my blog: not only the things I write about, but tags I put on the posts. WordPress provide better and better ways all the time of viewing different statistics so I thought it would be fun to see what my top hits were this year – what posts have been most read by my visitors. So, here they are for you, my Top Ten posts for 2012, with links in case you’d like to read them – or read them again!
1. Restaurant Review: Al Boccon di’Vino
2. TV Review: Ottolenghi’s ‘Jerusalem on a Plate’
3. Travelling Light: Ten Essentials for Hand Luggage Only
4. Puy Lentils with Tomatoes, Red Onion, Herbs & Balsamic
7. Book Review: THE FABULOUS BAKER BROTHERS
8. TV Review: ‘Sicily Unpacked’
9. Linguine with Prawns in Fresh Tomato & Chilli Sauce
10. A Cena’s ‘Not So Secret Supper Club’
I realised some time ago that reviewing TV cookery programmes brought lots of visitors but I’m pleased to see that four of my recipes have made it into the top ten, and also the lovely A Cena restaurant’s Not So Secret Supper Club. Since I’ve published 237 posts, then the popularity of these posts is put in perspective.
Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy the list and my next task – albeit it a fun task! – is to put together a list of the ten most popular cookbooks chosen in my Chefs’ and Restaurateurs’ Top Ten Cookery Books series. There are some that come up again and again while each interview always brings new ones. I think it will be interesting to find out which are my interviewees favourite books. But that’s for another post.
