Thursday, April 15, 2010

Genea-Musings is 4 years old today

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It seems like just yesterday that I started my Randy's Musings blog - here is the first post on 15 April 2006. I explained the change to Genea-Musings in my first anniversary post on 15 April 2007. In my two-year anniversary post, I showed a screen shot of the early blog page and showed a graph of my traffic in the past year. Last year, in my three-year anniversary post, I wrote about the past and the future of Genea-Musings.

Frankly, not much has changed in the past year - readership is up slightly, and the number of posts is down slightly. The content has changed a bit - tilting more toward the personal family history research and the daily blogging memes. My time budget has changed a bit too - with more time devoted to blogging and speaking/teaching rather than research (e.g., I haven't been to the Family History Center once yet this year).

After four years of Randy's Musings and Genea-Musings, this is post number 3,774. Over 1,461 days, that averages out to be 2.58 posts per day. In the past year, I've written 956 posts, or 2.62 posts per day (those are somewhat lower than the third year). I think that the most was 7 posts in one day and I've had many days with zero posts (usually when on vacation).

My readership has increased each year. Since I started this blog, I have had over 422,000 unique visitors (these can be multiple visits per day by the same reader) and over 608,000 page views over four years, and over 267,000 page views and 191,000 unique visitors in the past year. Those numbers have stayed about the same in the last year.

My statistics indicate that this blog currently has about 526 unique visitors a day, with an average of about 733 page views. In addition, about 470 subscribe via email using Feedburner, about 560 via Google Reader, and about 70 subscribe via Bloglines. I don't have a count for other feeds, blog readers and Facebook posts. If I had to guess, I would say that about 1,800 persons read Genea-Musings on an average day. A significant number of the readers (probably over 50%) on the actual website come via a search engine - you wouldn't believe what some of the search parameters are!

This traffic chart for the last year (15 April 2009 to 14 April 2010) shows Page Loads (green), Unique Visitors (blue), and Returning Visitors (orange). You can really see the effects of my Down Under vacation in March, eh?



This is a traffic chart for the last four years (since July 2006 when I subscribed to StatCounter) in terms of Page Loads (green), Unique Visitors (blue), and Returning Visitors (orange).



I analyzed this chart to death last year so I won't bother doing it again.

I really appreciate the Genea-bloggers community and all of my Genea-Musings readers. Without all of you, we would not have as much genealogy information (news, research experiences, family history, photographs, etc.) online. Blogging and then social networking has brought democratization to the world of genealogy writing - anybody can do it (and many do it very well) and the genealogy community has more information faster than it ever has had before.

Some blogs die out due to lack of blogger interest or readership, and some have found a comfortable regular pace, while others chug along providing a daily diet of genealogy information (hopefully, some of it is helpful and useful).

I want to give credit to one of my blogging mentors - the late Ken Aitken who wrote the excellent Genealogy Education blog until shortly before his death in April 2007. Ken was a wonderful example of a genealogy blogger - a teacher, a writer, an encourager, a helper, a sharer - everything that many of my genea-blogging colleagues have or will become. I miss Ken terribly. Thankfully, his blog is still online. If you have a free hour, please go read some of Ken's work. It is because of Ken's encouragement and ideas that the Transitional Genealogy Forum discussion group and mailing list started, and from that the Professional Genealogy Study Group was started. Many genealogists and bloggers owe Ken Aitken their appreciation and gratitude for his efforts.

I'm going to take the rest of the blogging day off and celebrate - have a toast to Ken Aitken, and work on my Genealogy 101 class presentations and handouts! Oh - play with the grandgirls too!

13 comments:

my Heritage Happens said...

Congratulations again Randy, on 4 wonderful years! Happy Blogiversary!

Kathryn Doyle said...

Congratulations, Randy! Google Reader tells me you have 559 subscribers there.

Bill West said...

Happy Blogiversary, Randy!

Greta Koehl said...

Congratulations and Happy Blogoversary, Randy - you da man!

Delia Furrer said...

Happy Anniversary! You are an interesting guy and you write such a wide variety of topics. Keep up the great work and we look forward to many more years.

Jasia said...

Congratulations and Happy Blogoversary Randy!

Amanda E. Perrine said...

y Blogoversary! Here's to 4 more years!

Sheri Fenley said...

HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOU, HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOU, HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY DEAR RAAAANNNDYYY, HAPPY BLOGAVERSARY TO YOU!

Kathleen Brandt, Professional Genealogist said...

Congrats on 4 Randy. Happy blogiversary.
Kathleen, a3Genealogy

Anon said...

Happy Blogoversary Randall :)

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Happy Blogiversary Randy!

footnoteMaven said...

Happy Blogiversary Randy. It doesn't seem possible that it's been 4 years, 16 in web years.

I look forward to starting the day with you for many more years.

-fM

Steve Danko said...

Congratuations on four years in the blogosphere and best wishes for many more!