Statistics 2020: How Last Year Treated My Humor Blog

I do like starting the month, and the year, with a look at the past month’s, and year’s, readership statistics. Someday I’ll learn something from all this, but until then, it’s a good way to fill a publication slot with something that’s oddly well-liked.

2020 was my eighth year of this blog; I’ll reach the actual anniversary later this month. It was also the best-read year I’ve ever had around here. There were 56,241 page views recorded from 33,209 unique visitors. Both are about one-third higher than 2019’s figures, of 42,746 views from 24,539 visitors. The number of likes resumed its drop, falling to 1,205 from the previous year’s 1,714. My likes around here peaked in 2015 and have dropped every year except 2018 since. Comments rose a bit, with 392 received in 2020, compared to 277 in 2019. My comments also peaked in 2015, with 879 of them, although 2018 almost overtook that earlier year with 830 comments.

So I had a big readership spike in 2015 when Apartment 3-G went all to pieces. Then another one in 2020 when Mark Trail tried to somehow be more dramatic than the whole world. Clearly what I need is to somehow cause a bitter controversy to break out over, I don’t know, Gil Thorp and then sell my blog to Hollywood.

That’s what the readership looks like, in pictures and a handful of numbers. But what are people looking to read? Mostly, they want to read about Mark Trail. Also, to an extent, other comic strips. The ten most-read things I posted in 2020 were these; see if you spot any common themes:

• Why does Mark Trail look funny? Did something happen to James Allen?
• Why does Mallard Fillmore look different now? What happened to Bruce Tinsley?
• Why does Mark Trail look different? Did James Allen leave Mark Trail?
• Norm Feuti’s _Retail_ comic strip is ending
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Do you hate the new Mark Trail? August – November 2020
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Did Mark Trail leave Harvey Camel for dead? December 2019 – March 2020
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Is Mark Trail ever coming back? June – August 2020
• Why does Heart Of The City look weird now? Who’s drawing Heart Of The City?
• Jules Rivera takes over Mark Trail in October
• Why does Pluggers look different? Did Gary Brookins stop drawing Pluggers?

It’s a bit sobering to realize that what people most want from me is that I read the Daily Cartoonist and mention stuff from it later on. If that’s what people want and actual comic strip news sites don’t block my IP, fine. I’ll do that.

The most popular long-form essay I posted in 2020 was What Your Favorite Polygon Says About You, which pleases me. That’s a nice silly piece just true enough to catch.

There was a tie for my most popular Statistics Saturday post. Statistics Saturday: Where Comic Strips Are Set, which offers real information, got as many views as Hypotheses about How the Premise to _Loonatics Unleashed_ Came About, which mocks a harmless cartoon for no good reason. I’d still like to know how such a weird thing came about, though.

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There were 151 countries or country-like things, such as the United Kingdom, to send me readers at all in 2020. Here’s who they were:

Country	Readers
United States	42,247
India	2,335
Canada	1,679
United Kingdom	1,510
Australia	895
Philippines	693
Brazil	525
Germany	498
Italy	445
Sweden	423
Finland	294
South Africa	283
France	275
Spain	267
Norway	205
Macedonia	164
Netherlands	157
Mexico	156
European Union	138
Colombia	120
Portugal	111
Ireland	105
Indonesia	104
Japan	104
Malaysia	104
Denmark	94
New Zealand	88
Belgium	81
Kenya	78
Russia	76
South Korea	76
Singapore	71
Thailand	71
Chile	70
Hong Kong SAR China	67
Poland	67
Switzerland	66
Peru	63
Trinidad & Tobago	63
Romania	62
Taiwan	60
Argentina	57
El Salvador	56
China	50
United Arab Emirates	47
Pakistan	44
Nigeria	43
Austria	42
Turkey	41
Serbia	37
Greece	36
Jamaica	33
Vietnam	33
Sri Lanka	32
Bosnia & Herzegovina	28
Hungary	28
Czech Republic	25
Israel	24
Saudi Arabia	22
Bulgaria	21
Croatia	21
Kuwait	21
Papua New Guinea	21
Egypt	20
Ukraine	19
Morocco	18
Bangladesh	17
Ecuador	17
Nepal	17
Slovakia	17
Slovenia	17
Puerto Rico	16
Zambia	15
Costa Rica	14
Venezuela	14
Cyprus	12
Guadeloupe	12
Lebanon	12
Iceland	11
Oman	11
Tanzania	11
Uruguay	11
Estonia	10
Guatemala	10
Honduras	10
American Samoa	9
Qatar	8
Dominican Republic	7
Myanmar (Burma)	7
Kazakhstan	6
Panama	6
Bahrain	5
Barbados	5
Belarus	5
Guyana	5
Mauritius	5
Moldova	5
Paraguay	5
Bermuda	4
Bolivia	4
Brunei	4
Cook Islands	4
Fiji	4
Jordan	4
Latvia	4
Montenegro	4
Belize	3
Ethiopia	3
Laos	3
Tunisia	3
Uzbekistan	3
Zimbabwe	3
Albania	2
Algeria	2
Azerbaijan	2
Bhutan	2
Botswana	2
Cambodia	2
Libya	2
Malta	2
Senegal	2
St. Lucia	2
Uganda	2
Åland Islands	1
Aruba	1
Bahamas	1
British Virgin Islands	1
Burkina Faso	1
Caribbean Netherlands	1
Cayman Islands	1
Congo – Kinshasa	1
Curaçao	1
Georgia	1
Ghana	1
Guam	1
Iraq	1
Isle of Man	1
Jersey	1
Kosovo	1
Liechtenstein	1
Lithuania	1
Madagascar	1
Maldives	1
Mali	1
Mauritania	1
Mongolia	1
Nicaragua	1
Rwanda	1
Somalia	1
Suriname	1
Turks & Caicos Islands	1

I actually just reused the alt text from my December-2020-recap post. How right was it?

Nobody from Greenland, but that’s all right. I had two page views from Greenland on my mathematics blog so I’ll be riding on that high for a while.

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Over 2020, I published 204,435 words here, says WordPress. Spread over 366 essays that’s an average of 559 words per posting. Both of these are down a little from 2019’s totals,

What do I plan doing for 2021? Plot recaps for the story comics, obviously. I could probably shut down everything else on this blog and be as well-read. But I hope to keep publishing some long-form piece every Thursday night, Eastern Time. And some Statistics Saturday post, where I puff a quick joke up into a pie chart every week. And besides that? I don’t know; I guess I’m committed to finishing watching all these King Features Syndicate Popeye cartoons from the 60s. That’s something.

I’m glad to have you reading along. You can get all my posts by using this feed in your RSS reader. If you don’t have an RSS reader, you can get one (among other ways) by signing up for a free account with Dreamwidth or Livejournal. Then you can add any RSS feed to your reading page, through this link for Dreamwidth and through this link for Livejournal. Or you could click the “Follow Another Blog, Meanwhile” link on this page, and have it in your WordPress reader.

Thanks for being wherever it is you’ve ended up.