Happy New Year from Corinthian Matters! While I was enjoying a delightful Christmas break with friends and family in Columbus, Ohio, the stat bots at WordPress were busily generating an annual report concerning usage of this site in 2014. Some of this information looked interesting enough to share, and I had the vague recollection that I had previously published site stats for past years. Turns out I really love playing with these numbers. A little digging in the site archives turned up this statistical summary of usage from 2012 and this one from 2013, which comparatively show that the the site is getting more traffic now than ever before and that access has become truly global.
In 2014, our regular bloggers and guest writers added 46 new posts or pages to this site — about one post a week — a figure higher than 2013 (n=35) but significantly lower than the bumper year 2012 (n=87). Yet, 2014 still yielded 31,433 page views at this site, a figure nearly on par with the 33,000 views of 2012. This suggests that the content of blogs in previous years has entered the archived web and continues to attract traffic long after those original posts went up. In fact, the most popular posts and pages in 2014 were generally older posts that either offered unique interpretation or unique information. For comparison, I have listed the five most popular pages/ posts from the last three years. What interests me about this list is that posts or pages from previous years generated much more traffic in 2014 than new posts from last year. You’ll notice the staying power of many of the posts below.
Some two-thirds of the countries of this world (n=134 of 196) generated some interest in Corinthiaka in 2014, which is slightly greater representation than 2012 and 2013 (n=131). That the individuals who visited this site last year came from all over the world (as they did in 2012 and 2013 as well) is some indication of the broad interest in and relevance of Corinthian matters. As technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci discussed in her recent presentation on public scholarship at Bucknell University’s Digital Scholarship Conference, we’re living in a disorienting moment of ever greater connectivity when 90% of the populations of seemingly remote countries are equipped with smart phones and when scholarship is no longer “frozen” in print but can be made relevant to a far-reaching public.
This “global” representation is in some ways misleading in that most of this traffic came from North America and Europe, but still, all the world’s continents except for Antarctica are all represented. As for specific countries, the United States generated the greatest share (38%) with Greece (17%) and the United Kingdom (8%) following. Traffic from South America and southeast Asia was appreciable. Nothing yet from North Korea! The following table lists the top 25 countries that accessed the site in 2014 and the volume of traffic generated.
| United States | 11944 | 38.0% |
| Greece | 5416 | 17.2% |
| United Kingdom | 2644 | 8.4% |
| Italy | 1629 | 5.2% |
| Canada | 1341 | 4.3% |
| France | 839 | 2.7% |
| Germany | 818 | 2.6% |
| Australia | 772 | 2.5% |
| Brazil | 458 | 1.5% |
| Netherlands | 456 | 1.5% |
| Russian Federation | 378 | 1.2% |
| Spain | 302 | 1.0% |
| Turkey | 264 | 0.8% |
| Romania | 251 | 0.8% |
| Czech Republic | 225 | 0.7% |
| India | 214 | 0.7% |
| Switzerland | 205 | 0.7% |
| Japan | 204 | 0.6% |
| Belgium | 177 | 0.6% |
| Philippines | 159 | 0.5% |
| Norway | 155 | 0.5% |
| Poland | 126 | 0.4% |
| New Zealand | 112 | 0.4% |
| Republic of Korea | 111 | 0.4% |
| Denmark | 103 | 0.3% |
I also generated a word cloud (via Wordle) of the most common phrases that led visitors to this site via search engines. This data reflects not only the particular content that interests people about the Corinthia, but (obviously) also the content that is present on the site.
And here is the word cloud for the most common words (minus “Corinth”):
As one can see, most search engine traffic was directed to the maps, information about archaeological sites, queries about field survey, and searches for specific sites or people of the ancient Corinthia, especially the diolkos, Acrocorinth, and early Christian saints (e.g., Erastus and Leonidas). While some of these popular queries, such as the “diolkos,” represent topics that have appeared often on this site, others (such as Leonidas and New Testament Backgrounds) are less covered topics. I wonder how these stats would change if the site were populated with more information about Pauline studies, Judaism, and early Christian material.
This site is now in old age, as far as blogs go, as we move into year five. Thanks for visiting. As you have suggestions for resource development, I would be glad to hear them. And if you have interest in joining the small team of contributors to this blog, drop me a line: “corinthianmatters” at “gmail.com”.
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