heath ledger

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Most popular posts of 2009

27 December 2009 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

As the first of my end-of-year posts, here’s a list of the most-read posts from (most of) 2009.

  1. Fisting Twitter and the birth of “trend fisting” (1 March) I daresay that for many visitors this piece wasn’t what they were really looking for. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting Twitter case study. For some value of “interesting”.
  2. So what is Stilgherrian, exactly? (12 April) Almost as popular as the official About Stilgherrian, which isn’t listed here because technically it’s not a “post”.
  3. Virgin Blue’s mistake reveals countless selfish whingers (15 November) A combination of a good headline and being listed at mUmBRELLA helps boost traffic.
  4. Live Blog: Politics & Technology Forum 2009 (22 February) Again, proof that a slow, steady audience over time can be of great value.
  5. Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions (26 January) Wallace speaks for the Australian Christian Lobby about Internet censorship, using the “extreme libertarian” straw man and other fallacious debating tricks.
  6. Special Melon Pepperoni Edition now online! (28 March) It’s probably less that this post is about an edition of Stilgherrian Live, more that it includes Andrew Bolt’s astoundingly tasteless slur on those who oppose Internet censorship.
  7. What now for Senator Conroy and the Magic Filter? (30 March) Again, not what I’d have picked from my many writings about Internet censorship, but there you go.
  8. Conversations are not markets, people! (26 July) A long ranty piece that seems to have struck a chord.
  9. Project TOTO: the #secretmission has begun! (19 May) Interesting that the post announcing this project was the most popular, and then interest declined. Why? My guess is that visits to this post were inflated by so many people commenting on The Gnome Incident rather than the substance of the project. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
  10. Live Blog: ALIA Information Online 2009, Day 1 (20 January) This is a big surprise. However we’ve now moved well out of the long head of very popular content and all sorts of factors could come into play. I suspect that traffic to this page was a short, sharp spike around the time of the conference and then virtually nothing since.

Many older posts also continued to be popular.

Indeed, 5 of the top 10 posts of all time are not from this year, and it took longer to work down the list to find a Top 10 for 2009 than it did to find the Top 10 of all time — yet more proof that the more material you have on your website the more visits you’ll get. Don’t delete your old material, people!

This could also explain why the Top 10 above is mostly from the first half of the year.

OK, the Top 10 posts of 2009 that weren’t written in 2009.

  1. So this is human sexuality? July (2008) Little more that a collection of the popular words from sex-related spam, it continues to attract 2000-odd visits a month.
  2. Julie, I want to make you a star (in a Samantha Fox kind of way) (September 2007) My ode to Julie Bishop, popular because of its photograph of Samantha Fox.
  3. Live Blog: Internet censorship forum (November 2008) Can anyone tell me why this post is the most popular of the many I wrote about Internet censorship prior to this year?
  4. Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products (October 2007) People link to the (fake) photo of the Hello Kitty AK-47. Few seem to realise it’s a joke.
  5. Film Review: “Joy Division” (February 2008) I think most people link here for the classic photo of Joy Division by Kevin Cummins.
  6. Heath Ledger dead: jokes here please (January 2008) My tasteless experiment in Googlebaiting continues to attract visitors.
  7. More Steve Irwin jokes (September 2006) Another lesson: Providing a forum for the lowest common denominator of society generates hits — but are they of lasting value?
  8. The Madness of Corey Worthington Delaney (January 2008) And speaking of lowest common denominator… ;)
  9. What’s wrong with used knickers? (December 2007) Well, it’s a fair question, isn’t it?
  10. Used knickers, revisited (January 2008) I detect a theme developing here. Thank goodness we’ve reached #10.

You might also like to check out my own selection for what I think was best, plus the lists for previous years:

Most popular posts of 2008

21 December 2008 in Blogging by Stilgherrian | No comments

Following established mainstream media tradition, my year-in-review pieces will start appearing well before Christmas. He’s a list of the most-read items on this website for (most of) 2008.

  1. Heath Ledger dead: jokes here please. It’s rather depressing to discover that my tasteless little experiment was this year’s highlight. Maybe I should’ve put advertising on this page.
  2. So this is human sexuality?
  3. How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?
  4. Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic. This is actually spurious, as most hits are from link-following robots attempting to spam my blog at topic9.com.au (which has been since been abandoned).
  5. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000, though most of this traffic is to see the photo. The miltech fanboys are incapable of hosting their own photos, it seems, because most of their troll-filled forums don’t allow people to upload photos. Dark Ages.
  6. About Stilgherrian, which would seem to be a popular second page for people to visit once they’ve arrived here for other reasons.
  7. Corey Delaney, freedom fighter (for the right to party) — and increasingly I think Mr Corey Worthington Delaney is one of the true heroes of 2008. But not thereafter.
  8. Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners.
  9. Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up.
  10. Achtung! Die grosskapitalistischen Hühner kommen!

As with last year’s list, I’m somewhat disappointed with the results. I’ll therefore choose my own selection of “best” posts, just like I did last year.

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So, did we attract more porn searches?

03 August 2008 in Human Nature by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Did publishing a list of porn site search terms change the pattern of traffic to this website? Not much.

The most common search terms apart from my own name are still “heath ledger jokes”, “steve irwin jokes”, “used knickers” and “corey delaney”. The only ones I could see “young pussy”, “asian pussy”, “strip pork gams porn”, “sex fuck cartoon milf jimmy neutron”, “latina asian hardcore free no charge gratis porn sex amateur” and, my favourite, “deep throat black hung transsexuals no membership free access”.

[Update: Actually, there is an increase in traffic. It's not showing up in the search analysis, but that page of search terms is getting 200 visitors a day.]

Who’d have thought? An obituary for Heath Ledger in Middle English! Well, for a character he played. Doffing the hat to Quatrefoil, who writes, “Whoever writes this blog is frequently side-splittingly funny, but he or she can write (and knows their Middle English passing well). I am filled with wonder and envy.”

29 February 2008 by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Thank you, Richard, but no. This article in The Onion is not about me. Close though, eh?

21 February 2008 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Lessons from tacky Heath Ledger jokes, final edition

19 February 2008 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

It’s nearly a month since I posted my tacky Heath Ledger joke page. What have we learned? Truth be told, not a lot more than I wrote in the Day 1 lessons and the items tagged “heath ledger”.

But let’s look at the total traffic anyway, this time using a graph from Google Analytics which shows visits only visitors to the jokes page.

Graph of one month of Heath Ledger-related traffic

As of just now, there’s been 11,717 page views in total, representing 8,798 unique visitors who stayed on average for 3 mins 44 secs per visit — quite respectable!

Traffic took a couple of days to peak — the first day being fuelled by Google Adwords — with a secondary peak the following week when Ledger’s funeral arrangements hit the news. Google rates the peaks as about 1000 visits a day and even now, a month later, we’re still seeing 60 to 80 visits a day.

As for the jokes themselves, well… to be honest I really don’t want to read them again. Most of them were crap. If you’ve got any astounding sociological observations, feel free to post a comment.

“Recreational outrage” is annoying

05 February 2008 in Human Nature by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

Maybe it was the phase of the Moon yesterday, but two different people were unhappy with discussions here and launched personal attacks. Google says I’m not the first to coin the term recreational outrage, but it’s certainly a perfect description.

If you read my every word — and I know you do, Gentle Reader — you’ll remember that my compulsory 9/11 post from 2006 mentioned “recreational grief”, a term I picked up from Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying:

The degree of public mourning following the deaths of Lady Diana and John F Kennedy Jr led social observers to wonder if grief is an ever-present latent feeling just waiting to be exploited by the political elite, if people’s lives are so empty that they engage in recreational grief… Perhaps individuals are emotive puppets manipulated by the mass media and/or political elite, and people cry because they are shown other people crying for a celebrity.

Perhaps outrage is also an ever-present latent feeling. If people’s lives are so comfortable that there’s nothing serious to get angry about, they’ll find somewhere to vent their outrage — going to considerable effort to find it.

Yesterday’s incidents could well illustrate this.

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Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 9

01 February 2008 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Traffic Graph for 2008-02-01 showing traffic starting to steadily decline

Well unless Heath Ledger is in the news again for some reason, apart from the routine news about his funeral etc, I think the steady decline seen in the traffic over the last three days will continue.

As with the Steve Irwin jokes, though, the traffic will never fade away completely. There’ll always be some level of searching for “heath ledger jokes”, and occasional surges as he enters the news.

There’s today’s graph for now. More detailed analysis and reflection later.

Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 8

31 January 2008 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | No comments

Traffic Graph for 2008-01-31 showing traffic relatively steady

Given that there’s quite a bit of fluctuation in web traffic from day to day anyway — for all manner of reasons — I’m going to say that it’s been relatively steady through the week so far.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Heath Ledger jokes page is now sustaining itself on Google search results. I think I’ll do a more detailed end-of week analysis tomorrow. I just wanted to publish something about this Experiment today because I know every single reader is awaiting my every word on this important global issue.

Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 7

30 January 2008 in Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Traffic Graph for 2008-01-30 showing traffic continuing to gently rise again

Another day, another traffic graph for The Heath Ledger Experiment. And once more, contrary to my expectations, there’s another gentle increase in traffic.

Could this be because the Heath Ledger jokes page is now the top result when you do a Google search for “heath ledger jokes”?

Today is about other things for me, not Mr Ledger, so I’ll return to these thoughts tomorrow. But do feel free to add your own comments.

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