2014 at the complete review - site statistics

       After yesterday's look at The year in reviews at the complete review, now some user-statistics:

       The 50 Most Popular Reviews - 2014 look much like those in 2013: mainly backlist reviews, and dominated (even more so in 2014) by titles by African and Indian authors -- a stunning nine of the top ten:

1. Five Point Someone, Chetan Bhagat
2. The Dilemma of a Ghost, Ama Ata Aidoo
3. The Gift of a Cow, Premchand
4. One night @ the call center, Chetan Bhagat
5. The Three Mistakes of my Life, Chetan Bhagat
6. Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
7. A Play of Giants, Wole Soyinka
8. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
9. Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda
10. Samskara, U.R.Ananthamurthy

       Of the top 50, 38 made the 2013 top-50 -- and the top ones, especially, continued to have staying power: only one title not on last year's list cracked the top 24 (Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, at number 8), and only a single 2014 title/review made the top 50: Zia Haider Rahman's In the Light of What We Know, at 49. (The next best positioned 2014 title/review was Ian McEwan's The Children Act, at 70.)

       As far as visitors went:

• Site traffic as a whole was down 6.77% (page views: down 9.67%), though the long term declining trend began to reverse itself in late summer and year-on-year traffic improved in the last months of 2014
  
  
• There were visitors from 228 countries (2013: 219); the top countries were (percentage of all visitors):
  1. United States 39.5%
  2. United Kingdom 10.00%
  3. India 8.14%
  4. Canada 4.49%
  5. Australia 3.17%
  6. Germany 2.24%
  7. Netherlands 2.07%
  8. Philippines 1.92%
  9. France 1.56%
  10. Spain 1.49%
  
  
• Among the top ten countries the ones with the biggest decline in visitors were Germany (-19.5%), France (-16.11%), the UK (-9.24%), and the US (-8.97%). The biggest increases in traffic were in Spain (+28.87%), the Netherlands (+14.26%), and India (+13.61%).
  
  
• Traffic dropped 9.19% in North America, but increased 39.26% in Africa
  
  
• Among other countries with significant daily traffic, increases were greatest in: Indonesia (+142.6%), Kenya (+137.74%), Nigeria (+118.56%), and South Africa (+36.61%). Declines were greatest in Japan (-25.39%).
  
  
• Among countries with limited daily traffic, increases were greatest in: Bolivia (a stunning +622.64%), Cameroon (+113.24%), and Bangladesh (+70.78%).
  
  
• Among countries with minimal daily traffic, increases were greatest in: Somalia (+138.46%). Decreases were greatest in Djibouti (-83.87%) and the Isle of Man (-61.9%)
  
  
• There were nine countries/territories that registered a single visitor, including Equatorial Guinea, the Falkland Islands, Svalbard & Jan Mayen, and 'British Indian Ocean Territory'.
  
  
• Two nations/territories went entirely off the map: the Netherland Antilles registered 25 visitors in 2013, and not a one in 2014; Vanuatu registered 13 in 2013, and also zero in 2014.
  
  
• The cities from which the most visitors came were:
  1. New York 3.63%
  2. London 3.13%
  3. New Delhi 1.35%
  4. Melbourne 1.29%
  5. Mumbai 1.15%
  6. Los Angeles 1.00%
  7. Toronto 0.98%
  8. Chicago 0.92%
  9. Sydney 0.84%
  10. Bengaluru 0.82%