On Thursday, I made my 200th post on the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean blog. So, I thought it would be a good time for a metadata Monday post.
Over those 200 posts, I’ve enjoyed approximately 56 page views per day. This is up from the 50 or so page views of day recorded through May of this year. My new blog still is far behind my old blog in terms of number of page views per day, but I suspect some of that is related to different tools used to measure page views on the two different platforms. I do wish that WordPress.com offered a more robust set of Metadata or could sync with Google Analytics.
In any event, here are some specifics:
The 20 most popular post in overall page views are:
Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota (531)
Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus (362)
Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay (326)
Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals (281)
The Future of the Computer Lab (203)
The Fortifications of Athens (128)
Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic (113)
Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese (106)
Job in Classics at University of North Dakota (81)
Methods, Questions, and Digital Archaeology (75)
Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus (75)
More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes) (71)
Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity (68)
Digital Humanities and Craft (67)
Teaching Thursday Trifecta (62)
Postcolonial Archaeology (61)
Theory and Medieval Archaeology (60)
Digitizing Theses on North Dakota (59)
The Poor Little Sherd (58)
Blogging and Peer Review (58)
In terms of hits per day, the list is pretty similar:
Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay (2.17)
Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota (2.01)
Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals (1.97)
Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus (1.38)
The Future of the Computer Lab (.95)
The Fortifications of Athens (.80)
Thesis Defense: Neoplantonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome (.70)
Job in Classics at University of North Dakota (.70)
Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic (.49)
The Poor Little Sherd (.47)
Postcolonial Archaeology (.44)
Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese (.39)
Blogging and Peer Review (.35)
Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus (.32)
More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes) (.31)
Theory and Medieval Archaeology (.30)
Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity (.30)
Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog (.30)
Teaching Thursday Trifecta (.26)
Digital Humanities and Craft (.26)
The most visited posts tend to be those linked to specifically from elsewhere (which is hardly a shock). “Lists and Rankings of Archaeology Journals” was linked to from the Chronicle of Higher Education as was “More than Four Reasons to Teach More than Four Classes (sometimes)”. “Blogging and Peer Review” and “Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog” were part of Colleen Morgan’s Blogging Archaeology project. “Pompeii in the 21st Century” benefitted links from various Pompeii related blogs. “Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic” was noted on a popular blog for contemporary minimalists. In contrast, “Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota” captures views from search engine queries on this popular and controversial topic.
Despite the occasional boost that a high-profile site can give to an individual post, the most consistent referrers to my blog are blogs penned by colleagues:
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World (my old blog) (953)
Surprised by Time (430)
Paperless Archaeology (358)
Objects, Buildings, Situations (306)
Research in Late Antiquity (253)
Google (219)
Twitter (various) (197)
Google Reader (163)
Facebook (104)
Middle Savagery (95)
Corinthian Matters (55)
I hope I drive as much traffic to their blogs as they drive to mine! One of the great things about blogging, is that I know far more about who reads my blog (and how it is discovered) than who reads my contributions to traditional scholarship. Metadata captures the contours of the social, intellection, and professional networks in which my blog posts circulate. In other words, if you like my blog, you should check out the blogs that refer to it. And if you read my blog, thanks!
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 