All the cool kids are doing two things at the end of the year. The first is a top ten list of most popular posts. I managed to figure out how to find this information from our Google Analytics account, and I’m so proud of myself that I’m going to share the results. Here are my highest traffic posts of 2011:
- 92,772 pageviews: Climate Skeptics Take Another Hit
- 82,779 pageviews: Why Rick Perry Won’t Win
- 71,615 pageviews: Fun With Charts: Making the Rich Look Poor
- 68,740 pageviews: Geeky Stats About Magic Mushrooms
- 64,188 pageviews: President Obama’s Christmas Present to America
- 55,854 pageviews: Just the Simple Truth
- 53,844 pageviews: The Great $16 Muffin Myth
- 48,075 pageviews: Quote of the Day: The Conservative Nanny State
- 41,209 pageviews: Video: UC-Davis Police Casually Pepper Spray Sitting Protesters
- 39,655 pageviews: The Housing Bubble and the Big Lie
Of course, this is all a bit random since a high-traffic post is usually just a marker that the MoJo powers-that-be highlighted it or that some other high-traffic blog happened to link to it. Unfortunately, my Google Analytics skillz are just barely good enough to generate this list, not good enough to figure out who my top referrers are. Maybe next year.
The second thing that seems to be the rage this year is a review of the past year’s posts to highlight my biggest mistakes. Unfortunately, my memory is nowhere near good enough to do this without help, and the Mother Jones archives aren’t set up to allow quick browsing of past posts. So this one is technologically out of reach for the moment. Feel free to nominate my worst boners in comments, though.
And now, just because this was so much fun, here are the next ten highest traffic posts of the year. Enjoy.
- 36,980 pageviews: Views Differ on Shape of Earth, Climate Edition
- 36,821 pageviews: It’s Not Just Rude, It’s Ruining Your Brain
- 30,231 pageviews: How to Talk About Solyndra
- 29,824 pageviews: Corporations Hate Regulation, Until They Love It
- 27,794 pageviews: 40 Percent Less Government Will Be Fun!
- 27,645 pageviews: Why Unions Matter: The Numbers
- 26,820 pageviews: Why Did World War II End?
- 26,253 pageviews: Standing Up To Glenn Beck
- 25,832 pageviews: Ronald Reagan’s Real Legacy
- 25,486 pageviews: Building Better Kids
Altogether, this is a pretty wide ranging bunch of favorites. But if you’re looking for posts about the euromess, I’m afraid none of them made the top 20. Just not a very popular topic, apparently, and one where you really have to read lots of posts to get a good picture of what’s going on anyway. But for what it’s worth, here are the top two:
- 23,997 pageviews: A Conversation About Greece
- 17,093 pageviews: Who’s Responsible For the Euromess?
