I have not travelled to any exotic countries (its the 3 kids that prevent me!!, not me personally!!) yet out of all my blogs ( from Australia, USA and Taiwan) my Taiwan blog has received 100's more hits than any of my other blogs....
was it just my witty title *Warning* Naive Traveller Ahead (which I dont think it was... ha ha ha and even though the entry is dated for 2005 I only blogged it a couple of months ago) or is it just that people are more interested in reading about Taiwan than the other countries?
Anyone else had similar experience?
Reply to this Looking at my stats I think some destinations do get more hits. But I've noticed that sometimes the number of hits seems to be related to what is in the news. For instance when a certain Hollywood couple in Namibia had their sprog I found the number of hits on my Namibian blogs increased greatly. I was getting a much larger number of hits than when I had first written the thing. But since the news agenda has changed the number of hits on that blog have declined to a normal number. I also noticed a similiar effect on my New Orleans blog, my Chad blog and a number of others. Of course a good title can also inflate the hits!
Reply to this I am surprised how a short little blog with a lonely two little photos that I did on Liechtenstein has gotten the most views almost each month since I posted it. Now, my blogs on Yosemite, Venice and Prague I can understand being in my top 5, but why Liechtenstein? Makes no sense to me.
Reply to this Another factor I suppose is how many blogs are out there on a particular subject. For example there must be 100's on ANKOR for example which could dimished the chances of any particular blog on the subject scoring hits.
Another thing I would like to know, is from where do I get hits.
Reply to this Yeah, I'm with you Amy. My top one is one from a nowhere place in Ontario, Canada. It outstrips the rest by far. But overall, Italy and NYC are my top two places. But surprisingly my ones from Rome aren't in top, but Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. I don't know if it's cause of the titles, the pictures, or what.. but I am ever amused.
Reply to this Hello Bobby 😊
My Iran blog gets more frequently hit than all the others.
My trip to Iran seems to fascinate people both on and offline. Some want to know what I was doing in a weird place like that, some are interested because they want to go there and others are interested because they would be afraid to go there.....
My blog about Rome is the least hit too Liz. I dont know why. Maybe a lot of people have been there so they are not curious about it. :S
Mel
Reply to this My number one performer every month is my Mexico City blog, followed closely by my 'Into the Mirador Basin' blog. I am not sure what makes the Mexico City one so popular, but it may have something to do with the perceived danger in traveling there. The Mirador Basin one was a fun adventure, but it probably receives so many hits because it is way too long and people have to read it in two or three sittings. As a whole, my Antarctic blogs do the best. I suppose the more odd or off the beaten path the place is the more hits it will get.
Keith
Reply to this Strangely we get tons of hits from a really poorly done blog from Germany because we are some of the only people to have ever blogged from there. It ranks as high as our South African blog which won the 2007 travelblog contest. The SA blog had great pictures and decent writing, the German one had poor writing and poor pictures. Its all dependent on all the things you mentioned above.
Oh, we also have a really frequently read blog from Jamaica which is a very dull/touristy location. It seems that few people who blog spend time traveling there so we are one of maybe ten people to have blogged from there. Its pretty wild, no?
Reply to this I have been wondering about this for weeks now as my El Salvador blog where I did absolutly nothing at all and this is not a very well trodden destination and so maybe people are just curious about it, but I did note a best seller book I was reading at the time which I think may be just one reason this blog has gone through the roof. Hanoi to Beijing another very recent over land experiance is right up there, as many people who are in Vietnam want to go over land to China but are maybe not sure as there really isnt much written about it, where my Mexico City blog is one of the least read.
Amoung my highest read are the more indivdual experiances, Shaman School Guetamala, Oaxaca Street children in Mexico, Angkor Wat but its again about the orphaned children who live within, doing Ayahuasca in Peru jungle, La Paz about the withces stuff. Anything odd and not in LP people seem to like.
I also think that if your photos are listed on indivdual country pages people just click to have a quick look.
Reply to this I think Ali has mentioned in other threads that the majority of hits (long term) are from search engine traffic, which sadly means the quality of the blog (either photos or text) is pretty much irrelevant - it's more whether your text (and, especially, title) contains words that people are searching for. That's why topical places and subjects (and obviously anything to do with sex) will generally score well when it comes to hits. Also, blogs on less common places/experiences will also be likely to get more traffic since there will be many fewer blogs (as well as many fewer web pages in general) on those places/experiences to match up with search queries.
All my most-hit entries contain a place name in the title - the one exception is the entry on Khajuraho, which of course was about erotic sculptures (and the one picture from Khajuraho that I have up on Flickr has had more than 6 times as many views as the next most viewed from anywhere). I see that many of my China entries are now getting increased hits, presumably because of the coming Olympics. If you look in the bottom block of this link
Most Viewed Blogs you'll see the most viewed blogs of all time - they generally follow the pattern of having a place name in the title (though having banged on about that for this entire paragraph, I'm now scratching my head to explain the top 2 in the list ...)
I'm sure that information about where hits are coming from is available (Flickr does a breakdown, for example) but whether Travelblog has been gathering that data since the dawn of time is one thing, as well as whether it's a pain in the neck to actually extract it. A question for Ali, I guess.
Reply to this One of my blogs has been read twice as often as any other - it is one of the least well-written, but has the word "sex" in the title. At least it did until I changed the name, so that maybe readers would choose better entries to read!
What is the average "hits per day" for travelbloggers?
Reply to this I am so excited that a question I asked a year ago is on the front page!! I asked this question only a few months after starting my blog.... and it is still true... the Taiwan blog is far ahead of anything else....around 500 or more higher than the next one.
I have recieved a few comments from people who thanked me for writing about the transit/free overnight stay when flying thru taipei - so I think it might be a google search that is leading people there - personally we did it as the tickets were $1000 cheaper and you get free accomadation and meals for 24 hours.
Thanks for all the feedback. As there are so many blogs about australia my current ones dont get as many hits... but that is ok - its all fun.
and Jonathon I get around 300 hits per month together for the 50 blogs I have - and I have never featured on front page, or say that they are the best or anything...I am just a small time fish... so I am sure some people are getting 1000's...
Reply to this I heard that famous bloggers(I dont know if any famous ones contribute to this site) often write a blog per day.
That makes me wonder what they write about. Do things worth writing about happen to them everyday?
Reply to this I did that when I was in Russia - and most of the time they were rubbish because I had no news! I now write about twice a month, and don't pressure myself to write if I'm not in a creative mood, which I like to think means that the quality is better, even if I get less hits.
Reply to this I've wondered this for a while myself actually..
I've noticed with my blogs that the most read are my new ones which makes sense but over time they get read less and less. However there are blogs that get read constantly. Those popular blogs change over time. My most read blogs these last few months are from Austria maybe because it had Hitler in the title (Hitler knew how to live.) and my Laos blog is doing well. Previously I've had other blogs do well. My blog on Dubai was going nuts for a while quite a few months after I wrote it and now is my most viewed blog. My Vegas blog also did well for a while but now it and Dubai hardly get any views. Bali has always had a large stream of visitors.
I'm pretty sure its mainly due to two factors. The title is the most important as many people have talked about putting sex in the title. None of my blogs have sex in the title, maybe I should one day just to see if gets a lot of hits. A quite a few of my older ones have the location in the title but apart from Vegas, Bali and Tijuana, haven't faired well. I rarely put the location in the title anymore as I try to write a title that sounds intriguing and make you want to read more.
The other factor is what people are searching for on google or travelblog itself as a travel destination. I guess places that are unusual like Mell's Iran (I admitt I was reading a lot of Iran blogs myself when I was planning to go there) would get a few hits however my blogs on Oman don't get any more views than most, maybe its not wierd enough. Also I've seen my American blogs do well overall I guess since America is one of the world's biggest tourist destinations. Also as new places become popular a lot of people search for them. My South East Asian blogs were doing very well for a while when I first published them but now since so many people are going there and there are so many blogs they hardly get viewed at all.
Im disappointed to say that the favourite blogs of mine which have my best writing and pictures dont get viewed much so I guess content doesn't matter. My blog on Israel was featured on the front page and went nuts while it was there but isn't viewed much now.
So my theory on getting blogs read a lot is it being about a popular destination, featured on the front page and having something to do with sex in the title.
Reply to this We agree that our blogs that get the most hits are the ones that are about places which aren't visited much by other bloggers. Some of our blogs have way more hits than others, the ones which don't have as many hits are for more popular places which get loads of visitors and therefore loads of blogs published on these destinations. As to how many hits we get on our blogs...last month we had 1200 hits, this month alone we have had 300 and in total we have had around 40,000. All our blogs go on the front page, so we don't know whether this has anything to do with it?
It's fun to see which blogs have the most hits...oh and it's true if you put sex in the title you do get more hits on that blog, people's dirty minds want to read the blog hoping it is about sex!
Reply to this My blogs about Dublin and Rome got more frequent hits during this Summer(in Europe) then they got in Spring.
Reply to this I know this is an old thread but I had something to add to it so thought I would revive it.
My Goa blog has almost double that of my second most popular blog, could it be the destination? or could it be the fact I wrote about that dreaded question (some) men ask their father in law to be before proposing? or better still could it be because I wrote about my eccentric 'hippy' father in law to be? I have no idea what it is about it but I'm glad people read it!
I only have one blog with sex in the title & it doesn't get many views lol.
Reply to this Our number one read blog each and every month is from Dubai. It has over 2400 hits at this point. Our train ride across Australia on the Indian Pacific Railway comes in second and Brunei comes in third.
A summary of our 193 day trip is currently in 4th place.
We published a few that we thought were far better blogs and some excellent photos but these 4 consistently stay at the top so it has to be motivated by curiosity about the location.
Reply to this All things being equal, places that hold a fascination for people and/or those infrequently visited, tend to get more hits then usual destinations.
As an example, my five North Korea blogs all have over 1000 hits each, and they continue to get a strong number of visits each month. With other countries I've written about, some blogs will do well, and other blogs wont be as widely read, but all of the North Korean entries get regular visitors.
Incidentally, my largest viewed blog by a very long margin has the word sex in the title - nearing 30,000 hits! It really does not deserve such a lofty status amongst my blogs, there are far better ones in terms of subject, photographs and writing.
And thanks to Chris and Nikki for reviving thread 😊
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