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The year at the site - 2011 in review

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       It'll take me a few more weeks to crunch all the numbers and present the annual 'State of the Site'-survey, but here some of the data:

       - 212 reviews were posted at the site in 2011, with a total of 163,841 words; Literary Saloon postings probably close to doubled that word count -- the equivalent of a pretty fat book.

       - As in 2010, titles by authors from exactly 51 countries were represented, led by France (28 titles, down from 29 in 2010), the US (22), the UK (15), Japan (11), and Sweden (9). Only 31 languages were represented however -- way down from 41 in 2010 -- led by English (44, down from 51 in 2010), French (36), Spanish (23), German (17), and Japanese (12).

       - Fiction dominated completely -- 179 titles (84.43%), of which 170 were novels and 9 story collections.

       - The male/female divide remains surprisingly (but pathetically) constant, with only 16.51% of the reviewed titles (35) by female authors.

       The top five titles were:
  1. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (2010: 1)
  2. Disgrace, J.M.Coetzee (4)
  3. Atonement, Ian McEwan (9)
  4. 1Q84, Murakami Haruki (n.a.)
  5. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (8)
       Google's re-jigging of its search algorithm had an enormous (and devastating) impact on the number of visitors to the site. While traffic was still far ahead of 2010 in January and through mid-February, it was only keeping pace through April, and then was far below 2010 numbers for most of the rest of the year; for the year as a whole the number of visitors was down 25.44% from 2010, the number of page-views 25.63%. (This while the available content at the site increased about 8%).
       One reason for the impact of any Google-change: Google search results continue to bring by far the most traffic to the site. In 2011 89.38% of search queries leading to the site were made via Google -- down from 92.10% in 2010, but still .....
       The impact was greatest with regards to English-speaking visitors: vistits were down 31.04% from the US, 21.66% from the UK, and 34.31% from Canada (the top three sources of traffic). German visitors (6th most popular source) were barely down (-2.52%), while the Philippines (9th) were up +1.68%.
       The greatest decline from major sources of traffic was visitors from Ireland (14th), down 35.28%.
       There were appreciable increases in the number of visitors from Russia (21), Greece (26), Thailand (45), Bulgaria (48), and Slovakia (54). The greatest increase among countries from which there was a decent amount of traffic was Algeria (67th, +64.22%), the biggest decline Kuwait (86th, -43.06%); the greatest increase among countries where there was any appreciable traffic was Mali (+106.78%), the greatest decline Burma (Myanmar) (-55.81%).

       - The countries sending the most traffic (and the percentage of total traffic) were:
  • United States 37.82%
  • United Kingdom 11.63%
  • Canada 6.45%
  • India 4.06%
  • Australia 3.92%
  • Germany 3.58%
  • Netherlands 2.00%
  • France 1.77%
  • Philippines 1.47%
  • Italy 1.44%
       - There were visitors from 220 countries and territories in 2011 (2010: 224); among those countries from which there were no visitors were: Chad, American Samoa, Christmas Island, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Norfolk Island, San Marino, and Tuvalu.

       - There were single visits from: Åland Islands, Central African Republic, Cook Islands, Equatorial Guinea, Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Mayotte

       - New York narrowly beat out London as the city sending the most traffic; include Kensington (which Google Analytics considers a separate locale) and London is way ahead of New York (even with a negligible Brooklyn counted in). Impressively, Manila -- the 12th most popular city of origin -- beats out, for example, San Francisco -- though it comes in behind Paris.

       - The most popular search terms leading visitors to the site (2010 rankings) were:
  1. complete review (1)
  2. literary saloon (2)
  3. porno (12)
  4. book review sites (4)
  5. the complete review (6)
  6. mygale (-)
  7. haruki murakami (5)
  8. the elegance of the hedgehog (4)
  9. the literary saloon (9)
  10. mildred pierce novel (-)

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