2009 in Reviewblogwise, that is

Yesterday I blogged about keywords that led people here in 2009 to my humble little scribblings about what people know.  Today, it's geography day.

And the #1 country is ... see the list below.  No real surprises.

Visits to What People Know

1. U.S.
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. India
6. Singapore
7. Malaysia
8. Germany
9. Netherlands
10. Spain

Damn, and I thought I was like Jerry Lewis, crazy popular in France.  But of 77 countries from which people visited my humble blog, France comes in #54.  Well, that's kinda misleading since Google Analytics doesn't account for ties, it just ranks them first by number of visits and then alphabetically.  In other words, while I wonder whether there really is an Internet in France, it's higher than #54.

Of the U.S. visits, most obviously came from Georgia.  Probably by me.  California, Florida, and New York follow -- no doubt due to large populations and not because of some deep interest in what I have to say.  All states were represented, even obscure ones that I doubt really exist, like Delaware.

I had 22 visits in 2009 from my home state of Tennessee but not a one from my hometown of Lawrenceburg (better info here).  And I think there's Internet in L'burg.  But I could be wrong.

Data for the Year

I know it's not the end of 2009 yet, but I thought I'd look at the data for the year -- at least for this blog.  Below are the top ten search engine entries that resulted in folks ending up here.

1. knowledge and emotion
2. recall vs. recognition
3. cognitive mobilization
4. titular colonicity
5. emotion and knowledge
6. what people know
7. recall vs. recognition (again, dunno why)
8. chronic know-nothings
9. political knowledge
10. knowledge emotion

You can see an obvious trend.  I write a lot about many of these topics, thus Google (and a handful of other search engines) point my way.  And of course titular colonicity is a particular favorite of mine. Writing about that alone could be a full-time job -- plus I've always wanted to do a serious analysis of mass comm journals to see if it holds up as true.  I did a quick-and-dirty one of JQ once and it seemed true, that our use of colons has grown over the years.

The top search, knowledge and emotion, makes up 8 percent of all searches that found this blog.  I don't write a lot about this topic, so clearly I need to get more into it.  There is a lot of social psychology on the topic, but rarely does it get beyond the abstract, and it's even more rare that it is mass comm related or even  politically relevant.

There were 568 different search terms that led people here in 2009, most of them a single time.  Weirdest ones?

• are we awash in sensitivity: I did write about this one once, but odd someone would be searching for it.  And I'm certainly not awash with sensitivity.
  
• paul broun: He's my crazy congressman and I did mention him once, so kinda makes sense.
• the immensely inflated news audience:  No clue about this one.  Weird.  And stupid.
• athens awful:  Clearly not a fan of my town.  No idea why a search engine pointed 'em here.
  
• dilbert:  I did blog once about this great cartoon, so understandable.
  
• dr. barry hollander 3410: A student, no doubt, who really could have just gone to my web site, creatively named barryhollander.com
• kaye sweetser and mark johnson: what are these people doing here?
• uga barry hollander salary:  Oh please.  There's a site for this.  Why use Google?
• what percent of people know calculus:  No clue.  Nor have I written on this.  Ever.

There were other odd ones, but these are my favorites.  Oh the joy of playing with Google Analytics.

How People Get Here

Some factoids about the What People Know blog:

• It's a duh moment to say most readers come from the U.S.  Second place goes to Australia, which kinda surprises me, followed by Canada and the U.K.  Lots and lots of countries after that -- 87, if I'm reading my stats correctly.  Cool.
• In the U.S., obviously Georgia dominates.  Other places are, in order, California, Florida, New York, and Washington D.C.  It's the last one I find interesting.  The others are explained by sheer population size, but I suppose in D.C. some of my polcom stuff pops up.
• I get more referrals from Google searches than any other place.  Again, obvious.
• The top search term?  "Knowledge and emotion."  This is followed by some form of "recall and recognition" and then "what people know."  I'm happy to report "titular colonicity" is next.  Also high: "chronic know-nothings" and "cognitive mobilization" and "political knowledge."
• My biggest days were during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, especially in September and October.

Yeah, it's kinda clear I don't have a hot topic today, so messing with my Google Analytics data.  And so it goes.

What People Search For

Playing with Google Analytics you can find all kinds of useless info about your site. The most read blog topics from whatpeopleknow are:

1. Knowledge vs. Emotion
2. Recall vs. Recognition
3. Son of Recall vs. Recognition
4. What Happened in 1066
5. Objective vs. Subjective Knowledge

Other top finishers were blogs on chronic know-nothings, negative advertising, communicating science, and my personal favorite -- titular colonicity.

I should put links on each of these to their respective blogs on whatpeopleknow, but it's Sunday and I don't have that much motivation (except that I'm supposed to be finishing my grading, so this beats that). The individual blogs above were the best read of all my posts in 2008. Obviously the first three and maybe the last popped up on Google searches by people doing research in, or writing papers about, kinds of knowledge. That's cool. Hoped I helped.

Google was my top traffic source, with 43 percent coming via a search from that site. Twenty-seven percent came from my own web page. About 13 percent of traffic came directly here. Odds and ends make up the rest.

Nearly all my visits are from the U.S. Second is the U.K., followed by Canada, Vietnam, China, Singapore, and a bunch of others at just a few hits each. Georgia obviously dominates among the states, followed by California, New York, Texas, Florida, etc., no doubt a function of population since those are the biggest states. Not a single visit from my home state of Tennessee, despite me being fairly sure they have Internet there.

October 19 was my single biggest audience day, and the pre-election time saw my highest consistent traffic.

I've had interesting visits and comments, one by an author unhappy with my trashing of his book, another by a conservative documentarian unhappy about others commenting on his Obama film, and at least one by an hold friend of mine from elementary school.

And that wraps up 2008 in blogging about what people know.