Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog

Last week, I decided to finally upgrade my blog to the latest version of WordPress. I always try to avoid jumping in too soon on these things. That way, I avoid many of the little bugs and compatibility issues that tend to plague initial releases.

There is value to be gained by being an early adopter, sure. But there is also overhead, and free time is scarce enough without adding anything to it.

The Big Bad Blog has been doing “well”, I suppose, this summer. July was our first month with over 10,000 pageviews which did not feature the help of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the average number of daily views in August has been nearly triple that same number in March.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we take the philosophy that these things do not matter — we write for us, dear reader, not for you. However, those who know the individual behind the intrepid blogger are likely unsurprised that he obsessively checks out the site stats. And, it turns out, when one obsessively checks such stats, one wishes for the counts to increase.

Thursday evening, we switched over to the new WordPress. You will see that on the right side of the following graph, just before the dramatic fall:

So what happened? Did the blog go down due to a bad upgrade? Did it need to be re-indexed by Google, causing search results to dry out? Was the brilliant SEO ruined?

The answers: No, no, and ha!

When I switch over to Google, and take a look at their analytics, I see the following:

The same thing is measured, but now the results over the weekend stay at that same high level (and at about triple the level from March), having only a slight drop-off, rather than a dramatic one.

So no, the site did not suddenly break or become harder to find (or — heaven forbid! — become less popular). Something changed in the way WordPress’s native stats application counts visits.

The numbers provided by Google Analytics have, historically, been considerably lower than those provided by WordPress. Google does a much better job of breaking down the numbers, but I have been hesitant to switch over for one simple reason: for the first six months of the Big Bad Blog, we did not use Google Analytics.

Because the numbers offered by the two differed strongly, I felt I could not change. How could I figure out if a new blog post was as popular as the Marshmallow March? The only way is to compare numbers that have been gathered in the same fashion.

The popularity of a website, of a blog post, of a search term, is relative. If I count in one way, and you count in a different way, we cannot compare our numbers. That your number is bigger means little if you counted some things twice and I counted everything once.

Now WordPress has done themselves in. From August 13, 2010 onwards, their own statistics are being provided on a different basis. They are now much closer to those being provided by Google — which would lead us to believing that they are more accurate. Unfortunately, their newfound accuracy makes them less useful — they have changed their apples to oranges, and I now cannot use their stats to compare the old with the new.

Website statistics are only useful when used for comparison — beyond that they are merely navel gazing — and comparing two things requires consistency, not accuracy. I do not care if my results are all exaggerated by 30% (or underestimated by 30%), so long as they are consistently so. Then I know if more people are reading, or less, or the same.

As a result we are moving to Google for our measurements, as they seem to have been using the same measure since we first signed up to their site. And while that might reduce July to a 5,000 view month, at least I know that when August comes in at over 6,000 pageviews I’ve had a 20% improvement.

Whatever that means.

The Big Bad Blog is wrapping up our first year, and we now take a quick look back at the most popular bits from the blog this year.

Honorable mention: Rule Obsessions
We have written quite a bit about roleplaying here at the Big Bad Blog over the past year, but none of these articles have made our top five. Our look at those who are obsessed by the canonical text of the rulebooks proved to be the most read of these articles in 2009.

#5: The Bill Gates mock facebook page
This would seem to require no further introduction. Simply sharing a photo found online was the fifth most popular item on the blog in its first year. With 423 views, it was the only member of the top five not to garner 500 views.

#4: War of the Tubes

Back in August, I discovered that there exists a Cardboard Tube Fighting League, with chapters worldwide. It’s a fantastic idea, and a whirlwind of research quickly led to what would become the fourth most read article on the Big Bad Blog in its first year.

#3: Imprison the tourists
The first article on the Big Bad Blog to gain over 1,000 views, this was the first piece on what was to become a repeating theme on the Big Bad Blog — the harassment of photographers by the police.

Not surprisingly, this theme arrived around the same time as my photography hobby began and the photoblog category truly sprang to life.

#2: The Microsoft Dilemma
In June this year, it was reported that Microsoft would have to ship Windows 7 without Internet Explorer in Europe — but left to the company to determine how this was to be done. Microsoft later came up with a solution, and the European Commission dropped its case against them in December.

#1: The Marshmallow March
Shortly after buying my Nikon D300, the London Marathon was scheduled with the route passing only two blocks from my flat here in London. I wandered out to the race with my new camera, determined to take a ton of fantastic photos.

Nicole had told me that two of her friends were going to be running the race dressed as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and asked me to get a photograph of them. So I waited for them, long past the time when I would have otherwise left.

I was not disappointed — her two friends rounded the corner carrying a giant Stay Puft on a metal frame. I snapped away, and dutifully created the resulting blog post shortly following the race.

What a reaction I received.

I simply could not believe it, and continually refreshed my stats to watch the number of views increase. They finally topped out just short of 25,000 views — although that milestone has since been reached via the occasional random web surfer passing through. People were coming in from all over the internet, and it was fascinating to surf back to these places and see people coming in.

The marshmallow march shows how strange the Internet can be. Completely random things can simply catch lightning in a bottle, and what you wrote — or your photograph — can suddenly be everywhere.

Prior to this, I had only had approximately 5,000 views in the life of the Big Bad Blog — three photographs combined to get five times that number in approximately 72 hours. Today, that article still counts for nearly a third of all visits to the Big Bad Blog.

Hence, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is crowned the champion of the Big Bad Blog for 2009: