Welcome to 2016: Blog by the numbers

Happy 2016. For those keeping score at home, this will be the 10th year of posting on the blog. If you are into numbers like I am, you’ll note that although I started the blog way back in 2007, the blog really took hold in terms of frequent posts and updates in 2010. When the blog first started, it was limited mostly to information on the men’s xc/distance team. For the past five or more years, it has since expanded to be all-inclusive of the entire program – women, men, track and field, XC – as well as other random offshoot topics.

The 2015 count for posts was 402, just shy of the “blog PR” of 407 posts in 2014. I suppose I could have tried to make a run for it toward the end of the year with some more gratuitous holiday posts. But in keeping with the spirit of the blog, I only post when necessary (team results and news) and when the spirit moves me (random thoughts, things I find interesting, when I have the time and energy).

Because I am a Numbers Guy, I have started to note the number of total page views per year (you can see the fancy counter on the right side of the blog home page). Since I started noting it at the beginning of each year a few years ago, here are the page views (with the total number from the previous year in parentheses).

Jan 1, 2013: 264500
Jan 1, 2014: 376119 (111,619)
Jan 1, 2015: 501440 (125,321)
Jan 1, 2016: 639440 (138,000)

So with little to no promotion of the blog, the page view numbers have slowly and steadily increased with each successive year. As I am often fond of saying after spewing out meaningless information: This fact, along with $1.30, will get you a cup of coffee at Stewart’s. I mean, it’s not like added page views – or “unique visitors,” which is a popular metric in the media world – means additional income, or additional anything, for that matter. As the cliché goes (actually, it was a pretty good Steve Forbert song): “It is what it is, and that’s all.” Like I said, I don’t promote the blog much – not even among team members, as I think only a fraction of our athletes actually check it out. Again: It is what it is, and that’s all. I post as a matter of record keeping, and to keep those interested enough to keep following it in the loop with team doings. Here’s to another year of posts and page views and most importantly great performances by the men’s and women’s track team at Marist College.