Issue 8: We’re Big in Japan

Now that Issue 8 has launched, we’ve started looking at our Google Analytics to learn more about our readers. Already this has revealed some surprising facts about who visits our site and how they find it. For example, between November 6th and December 6th, 2011, 67% of our viewers visited Superstition Review for the first time. It’s great to know that we’re attracting so many newcomers.

In that same span of time, there were 4,279 unique visits to our site for a total of 13,230 page views. Our readers visited an average of 3 pages per visit, and our most popular section this month was poetry, with a total of 677 views.

41% of viewers visiting our site found us through referring websites, while only 31% found us using a search engine. This statistic shows that we are increasing our affiliations with other like-minded organizations. Not surprisingly, our traffic skyrocketed on December 1st, the day of our launch, with a total of 1,157 unique visitors to our page on that day alone.

Our most frequently viewed contributors from Issue 8 were: Ashley Caveda with 405 views, Eugenio Volpe with 185 views, Nelly Rosario with 166 views, and Steve Yarbrough with 157 views.

We got the most visits from the United States. In the last month, the top 10 cities to view SR were: Phoenix, Tempe, New York, Columbus, Chandler, Scottsdale, Chicago, Ithaca, Indianapolis, and Gilbert.

Google Analytics shows that we are growing internationally as well. Our visitors came from 75 different countries, with the second highest number of hits coming from Japan. Superstition Review was viewed in 34 languages, with the three most popular being American English, British English, and Japanese.

We had a few visitors from some unexpected places. Google Analytics shows that between November 6th and December 6th, we had visitors from Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Latvia, Lithuania, Haiti, Laos, Kuwait, Thailand, and Iceland.

These statistics help us get a sense of who is reading Superstition Review, what sections of our site are most popular, and how our readers find their way to our magazine. It really is exciting to see the data behind our growth as a publication. Thanks to all of our readers for visiting.

 

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One thought on “Issue 8: We’re Big in Japan

  • December 17, 2011 at 12:54 pm
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    Interesting article, Samantha. I love looking at blogging and website statistics and I’m constantly checking my own Google Analytics reports all the time. One of the more important changes that has occurred as of late is the measurement called Engagement. Google is now finding more sophisticated ways to measure “Social Engagement”. Back just a few years ago, Engagement was measured in large part by a website’s Bounce Rate, which you didn’t mention in your article by the way. A lower Bounce Rate was interpreted to mean that visitors find your site interesting and engaging. Now it’s a bit more sophisticated. Engagement is also being measure by the number of “social mentions” at places like facebook and twitter. So, I was happy to see that those buttons appear right next to the content on this blog. It’s especially good to make sure your facebook and twitter pages are automatically updated every time a post is created here at SR. It helps boost the Social Engagement measurement. This is more important than just four months ago or so, because the latest Google updates emphasize aggressive pruning of the search engine results pages. Google is filtering out (aggressively now) sites that appear to be of lower quality. It’s all part of their mission to combat spammy sites. Good social engagement numbers equals a quality site, especially since the Panda Update, in my opinion.

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