Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Post postscript

About a year ago (April 12, 2011, to be precise), I commented here on Google's first full year of statistics  regarding post popularity on SF and Nonsense.

Effectively a year later, Betrayer of Worlds (October 12, 2010) remains -- by better than three to one! -- my most visited post.  It's also, and by a similar margin, the post most often commented upon. (My Fate of Worlds post -- you know, surely, that one is coming -- has its work cut out for it.)

Number two in cumulative popularity remains Trope-ing the light fantastic (life-sign detectors) (February 25, 2009). Number 3, however, is new to the tabulation -- the self-referential Postscript (or is that post post?) in which I announced last year's SF and Nonsense post-popularity statistics. The way things are trending, in a few months Postscript will move up to second place.

With that much interest, I thought: this should be an annual feature. And so here we are.

(Before going further into the numbers, an observation: Postscript (or is that post post?) was my 189th post. You're reading my 243rd -- for any particular post to stand out from the crowd is, presumably, getting harder and harder. Now back to this year's results ...)

With all-time-popularity rankings of 4, 5, and 8, we have posts dealing with Known Space and my Fleet of Worlds series of collaborations with Larry Niven:

Of fleet Fleets and Known Space (February 1, 2011)
Of Gw'oth and Jotoki (September 15, 2010)
Ring(world) around the betrayer (December 13, 2010)

whereas the posts with all-time-popularity rankings of 6, 7,  9, and 10 deal with some of my solo books.

Creative Destruction (February 11, 2011)
Countdown to Armageddon / A Stranger in Paradise (May 26, 2010)
InterstellarNet: Origins (March 29, 2010)
InterstellarNet: New Order (September 30, 2010)

Google's blog stats, alas, are offered with quite limited granularity -- the compilations zooming in from "all time" straight to "latest month."

Posts made within the past twelve months are at a definite disadvantage in a cumulative-to-date ranking. Considering only the most recent month's ratings, four of the above all-time most popular remain in the top ten:

#1 Betrayer of Worlds
#2 Creative Destruction
#8 Trope-ing the light fantastic (life-sign detectors)  
#10 Postscript (or is that post post?)  

joined by apparent up-and-comers:

#3 Ice, water, and fire (March 6, 2012) -- a Known Space-related post
#4 Frontiers of Space, Time, and Thought -- an odyssey (April 3, 2012) -- about my latest book (and after just one week on the blog)
#5 Space-y program (March 13, 2012) -- about the (lack of a) NASA manned space program
#6 Physics: nothing to sneeze at (March 27, 2012) -- physics news
#7 Humans, Pak, Puppeteers: in one word  (September 26, 2011) -- a Known Space-related post
#9 Grand opening! (March 20, 2012) -- announcing my new-and-improved authorial website

Any predictions out there which posts will score highly a year from now?

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