the 2014 analysis

2014 is finally drawing to a close. It was the best of years, it was the...no, just the best of years. That's all. There was probably bad stuff in the pre-August 5 days, but I don't even remember. It was the very best year ever.

I've done a variety of lame year-end reviews over the last few years.. For 2013 and 2012 I skipped the depressing annual life-review survey/questionnaire of 2011 , 2010, and 2009 and moved towards just analyzing my blog instead. Navel gazing? Probably yes. Interesting to me? Definitely yes. Interesting to anyone else? You decide. Feel free to skip out if numbers and percentages aren't your thing. But if you're a big nerd like me (slash just plain nosey...also like me), read on!

All data is obtained from Google Analytics, a.k.a. my best frenemy.

Also, if you have an excellent memory (OR you are totally obsessed with me and reread my archives on a daily basis...extremely likely...), you may think that some of my explanations here sound familiar. That's because I just copy-pasted some of my explanations from last year. It's not plagiarism if it's something YOU wrote, right? Right. And I explained it so nicely last time...I thought...how could I possibly improve on that? I shouldn't even try.

Between January 1, 2014 and December 30, 2014 (at 2:20 p.m.), this blog had...
-174,500 visits (a 100.2% increase from 2013!)
-282,349 pageviews (a 113.46% increase from 2013!)
-an average visit duration of 1 minute and 30 seconds (that's a tragic decrease of about 24 seconds from last year...I'm going to have to start packing more cute pictures towards the bottom to entice you to stick around longer!)
-1,087 visits that lasted for more than 30 minutes-- these visitors get the 'quality time' award. (And don't worry, those of you fretting that you might be skewing the very important numbers here because you sometimes just leave the window open with my blog pulled up...Google is smart and it only counts your time for as long as you're 'actively engaged' with the page- clicking stuff, scrolling...it won't count your time if you leave the computer on my page for 2 hours while you take a nap!)

In terms of "Referrals"-- sites that send traffic my way...
(I'm not including feed readers- BlogLovin, Feedly, etc.- this year, though the various readers together combine to make up the vast majority of my 'referrals.' But they're boring, so we'll skip them.)
*I'm including the number of visits and number of 'new visits' because that's really interesting to me. 'New visits' means it's the first time Google has recorded that person (IP address, really) ever coming here. If you return again, even via the same referring site, your visit gets recorded, but you're not a 'new visitor' anymore.

#1- Meet the Joiners: 6,751 visits; 6.4% new visits 
#2- Two Hearts and One Dream: 5,277 visits; 11.96% new visits
#3- Genuine Greavu: 4,879 visits; 9.26% new visits 
#4- Kelly's Korner; 4,745 visits; 23.12% new visits (As far as I remember, I only participated in one of her 'show us your life' link-ups this year (the Christmas decor one a few weeks ago), so most of this traffic is repeat visitors from past link-ups.)
#5- Ummmm...myself: 4,119 visits; .53% new visits (Gonna be honest, don't understand this one...not sure how my own blog counts as a referral? Anyone know?)
(We'll do a bonus #6 since #5 was stupid...)
#6- Stories of a Stay at Home Mom: 2,124 visits; 18.46% new visits

-In all, there are 409 'referring sites.' That seems like a lot, but it's a little misleading because of the way Analytics breaks down the sites now. For instance, if the referring website was being viewed as a .ca or .uk (as opposed to .com), it counts it separately. So (for example) it has my referrals from Aubrey's blog, which I and most (all?) Americans view as www.aubreyandnick.blogspot.COM (except we wouldn't capitalize the COM, but it's there for emphasis), broken down into like 10 different things. There are thousands of referrals from the address I just wrote, but then a couple hundred more from www.aubreyandnick.blogspot.CA (I guess those are Canadian referrals), more from www.aubreyandnick.blogspot.AE (no clue), more from www.aubreyandnick.blogspot.DE (no idea)...and more and more and more. You get the idea. Even though Aubrey only has one blog and REALLY all of my referrals are all coming from that one place, it's broken down into at least 10 different sub-referrals and I'd have to pick through and add them all up to find out how many people Aubrey REALLY sent my way. Make sense? It's dumb. And this is for EVERY referring webpage, not just Aubrey's! So...that's why I know there aren't really 409 DIFFERENT referring sites. End of rant.

18,643 people found their way here by Googling something. 22.68% of those were first time visits.

Unfortunately for us all, all of the top 50 search terms are really boring and predictable (like "something beautiful blog" or "erika matt something beautiful" or "something beautiful infertility"). And I don't feel like digging around to find the really funny ones that are buried somewhere on page 41. Womp.

My 10 most popular posts/pages, by number of pageviews:
-Homepage (171,451)
-Redemption (2,458)
-Chosen, Again (1,665)
-A Christmas Grammar Intervention (1,540)
-About Me (1,502)
-Christmas Tour 2014 (1,440)
-Weekend Distractions (1,416)
-Infertility & Adoption (1,315)
-Babies Don't Keep (1,255)
-Baby Updates. I'm Out of Creative Titles, Sorry. (1,218)


My personal favorite posts of 2014 (in no particular order):
-Redemption
-Dedicated
-The Logistics of Caring (it's not that I love what I wrote so much, it's that YOUR SUGGESTIONS ALL CHANGED MY LIFE and helped me to be a much better human being and friend- I reread that comment section frequently!!)
-Ask the Gym Fashion Expert! (also, it's the comment section that kills me. HILARIOUS.)
-Beauty Will Rise
-Babies Don't Keep

Favorite picture of 2014:

from Babies Don't Keep

It's not that I look great or Millie looks particularly cute- it's just that it's the picture that reminds me of how incredibly happy and grateful I felt in 2014. This is the me I always wanted to be.

Not shockingly, 2014 will go down in the books as my favorite year ever. I feel like I say that plenty enough, which is why I didn't think a 'life recap' end-of-the-year post was really necessary...but in case it wasn't 110% abundantly clear...

2014: The Year We Became a Family of Three

Best. Year. Ever.