Yellow Dog Patrol Anniversary

YellowDogPatrol.com just turned two years old.  I started this blog mostly as a means of testing Search Engine Optimization techniques, but it has blossomed into my own little bully pulpit, has received substantive props from Google, and developed a small but dedicated following. 

The site’s come a long way in the past two years, and I wanted to share some data that I found interesting: 

• The site’s received traffic from all 50 states, with Minnesota representing about 50% of the traffic, and California in a distant second.  The rest are widely spread, basically along population lines, save for Wisconsin, my new home. 
• The site also has received traffic from 88 different countries.  Ones that stand out include visits from Liechtenstein (population 35,000) the Faroe Islands (population of 45,000), and the Cayman Islands (population 50,000). 
• 54% of the visitors are considered “new”, with 46% having visited the site more than once.  14% of the site visitors have visited over 100 times. 
• Visits don’t go very deep, with 77% being just one page, but given the content and format, I guess that makes sense. 
• 4% of site visits are coming in via mobile devices, with iPhone responsible for half of that traffic.  Factor in iPad and iPod traffic, and Apple mobile devices account for 75% of all mobile traffic. 
• Search engines generate 43% of site traffic, of which Google does over 95%.  33% of site traffic comes from direct navigation or utilizing a browser “favorite” functionality.  The remaining 24% of traffic has been sent via links from other websites. 
• The top ten most popular pages were the home page (about 40% of site visits), the article on the Twins wives, the Devo concert review, the Tool concert review, the article about sitting in the Twins Champions Club seats, Cabela’s discontinuing Herter’s decoys, the Alice in Chains concert review, the Cajun bloody mary recipe,  the Shroud of Turin post, and the Vikings NFC playoff loss to NO in the 2009 season.  7 of this top ten were all written this past year, and many own #1 search rankings for popular keyword strings.  Two (the Favre post and the Shroud post) were linked to from other significantly more popular websites. 
• About a year ago, I presented my pride of being recognized by Google via a website Page Rank of 2.  For more details on what that all means, check out the article.  I'm shocked to report that the site is now at a site PR of 4!  This is higher than some commercial sites, and is a function of the amount of content that's being generated and the amount of traffic the site attracts.  My little natural seach playground appears to be successful.

Beyond helping me to have a working SEO laboratory, this blog has really been enjoyable to write.  The feedback I’ve received, from folks that agree with me or not, has always been valued (except for that one anonymous guy that got into it with me on my Decemberists Concert review). 

Based on my analytics, I know there are quite a few regulars that come to the site; some folks I know personally, but far more that have just found the site and have kept coming back for some reason.  Given my penchant for drifting in and out of topics, I’m not sure why those readers keeps coming back, but I appreciate them coming to the site very much.  The fact that there are some out there, known and unknown,  that find some value in my musings, rants, opinions, and stories is really heartening to me.  It is a nice compliment, so thank you. 

On to year three.  I hope you’ll continue along with the ride.  To all of you, thanks again for stopping by YellowDogPatrol.com.