I am a bad blogger. The good bloggers know exactly who reads their articles, how many pageviews they get each day, how people found their way to the articles, who their average visitor is, and on and on. But statistics and I just don’t get along, so most of the time I don’t know any of those things. However, last weekend I put in a bit of effort into generating some year-reports and thought I would share a bit of what happened here in 2014. Consider it a brief recap of the year that was.
More than 3,000,000 people visited the site in 2014, originating from 230 countries and territories (Top countries: USA, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa; shout-out to the person who visited from North Korea!). 78% of the visits were by Americans, and the top states were, in order, California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia, with the top cities being Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, and Chicago. Together, all those visitors generated a little over 12,000,000 pageviews while also clicking 3,600,000 links to other sites (largely through the daily A La Carte articles).
Twitter sent the most visitors to the site, followed by Google and Facebook. People who found the site through search engines did so primarily by Googling my name or a massive assortments of mis-spellings; beyond that, the top search terms were “Benny Hinn,” “Paul Washer,” and “porn.” More than half of the visits this year came from tablets and mobile devices.
So that was 2014 at a glance. Through it all, here were the 10 most popular articles of the year:
- Why My Family Doesn’t Do Sleepovers. I guess the title about says it all. It blindsided me that this would quickly become the most popular thing I’ve ever written.
- 7 Good Reasons To Stop Looking at Porn Right Now. I do not plan to stop writing about the evils and dangers of pornography until people stop looking at pornography!
- 6 Deadly Enemies of Marriage. In this article I reflected on some of the foremost foes of Christian marriage–the foremost foes I saw creeping up to assault my own marriage.
- The Porn-Free Family Plan. I am thrilled to see that so many people read this article and that so many have taken steps to protect their families.
- Please Don’t Give Them Porn for Christmas. Sometimes I am criticized for writing about pornography too often, but with 3 articles on pornography in the top 5, I think it shows how prevalent an issue it is and remains.
- The False Teachers: Benny Hinn. I wrote a series that focused on false teachers and the entry on Benny Hinn was most popular.
- Destroy a Church in 4 Simple Steps. This article came from reflecting and preaching on 2 Timothy 4 where Paul shows how churches can be destroyed from within.
- Heaven Is For Real. I wrote this review in 2011, but the release of the movie adaptation got people thinking about it again.
- 7 Things a Good Dad Says. I thought of the fathers I want to be like, and here are the things I hear them saying to their kids.
- Why I Love an Evening Service. Our church is one of those old-fashioned ones that clings to an evening service, and this article tells why I love it that way.
Before the year comes to a close I would like to thank you for reading the site for yet another year. Blogging remains one of my very favorite things to do and I regard it as an amazing privilege that I get to do it at all. I consider it no small honor that you choose to spend some of your precious time right here. So thank you. And here’s to 2015!
