Top Referrers 2008

adrianwarnock — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:50:00 +0000

It’s time for me to begin my annual blogging break over Christmas. I do want to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a very blessed New Year. The year 2009 is going to be an interesting year for me, that’s for sure. I look forward to sharing it together with you.

It’s amazing how the Internet has become a tool for bringing people together who would otherwise have never met. Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey that blogging has opened up for me. I pray that in 2009 the Lord will grant you favor and success in all that you do, that he will shape you to be more like Jesus, and that therefore your life will glorify God more and more. May it be a year of real progress for you as you grow to know and love Jesus more.

I will be “back” with a post on January 1st. Beginning on January 5th, however, I have set a bunch of posts to start autopublishing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only during the months of January and February. Please pray for me as I focus my spare time more and more on my book. It seems strange that the efforts I’ve been making behind the scenes will soon culminate in a completed book.

A big thank you from me to the many of you who have your own blogs and have been kind enough to link to me this year. I can’t return thanks to all of you, but this list (complete with the last position in brackets) is my way of thanking those who have sent the most readers.

Here, then, are my top 80 referrers for the whole of 2008, excluding search engines. For the top 20, I have also included their position from the last time I reported this in August. My buddy, Dave Bish, is STILL in fifth place!

The Top 40 Referrers To This Blog

adrianwarnock — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:50:00 +0000

One of my habits is that once per year I like to share with you a list of the top traffic referrers to my blog. This excludes search engines and blog aggregators. This time I thought I’d do it for half a year. So, here is the list for the first six months of 2008. You can compare the 2007 list — positions are placed in brackets after the current one.

There are a few things that are worth noting. For the first time I have included some interesting data which says something about the “quality” of the referrals. It seems that the readers of different websites vary in their level of interest in my blog and the length of time and number of pages they tend to look at. Also, partly depending on how well established a site is, and how well worn the path is between them and this site, we see big variations in the percentage of visitors referred that are new to adrianwarnock.com

There are a couple of new entrants to the list which suggest to me that there is a whole audience of Christian website readers who do not frequent some of the typical Christian blog sites. So, for example, not only was desiringgod the top referrer, but they sent a high proportion of new readers and high-quality readers who spent plenty of time at my site reading other pages.

Some of the old faithful top blogs sent readers, only one-third of whom were new to the site. A noticeable exception to this was my old buddy, David Wayne (The Jolly blogger), as a significant portion of his referrals came over here for the first time.

There are also a lot of readers coming from Twitter and Facebook, which are not exactly blog aggregators, and I suspect we will see these two services grow in importance in their ability to drive readers. The Facebook Blognetwork service has been especially helpful for me in finding other Christian blogs.

I have a sneaky feeling that there are a whole new population of potential readers for Christian blogs that actually don’t yet frequent any of the top blogs. I am fairly sure that a number of newcomers to my blog over the last few months fall into that category. Some of them haven’t even heard of a blog, and might not even realize that this is one.

I have noticed an increase in readers of the blog since I got rid of comments, and I wonder if some of the non-blog readering public who are finding their way here are actually put off by the vigorous debates often seen in comments sections. Does anyone reading here really miss the comments section? I know I don’t.

Since stopping the comments I have seen large increase in the number of appreciative e-mails I receive from readers, which suggests to me that these new readers are a nice bunch. I often have a smile on my face these days as I read my e-mails. So, thanks very much everybody, your feedback makes this all worthwhile. And thanks to everyone who has linked here, even those that didn’t make the top 40 as links—even on less well-read blogs—are definitely crucial in helping people find this and other blogs to read.

I’d love to hear from you if you fall into this group of people who have found my website in the last six months and who don’t really read many other blogs. Drop me an e-mail at adrian.warnock@gmail.com and let me know how you found the blog and what you do and don’t like about it.

Without any further ado, here are my top 40 referrers:

Position
(previous)

Ave
Pages per Visit

Ave
Time on Site

Per Cent
New to This Site

1.
(27)

desiringgod.org

3.15

00:06:22

57.15%

2.
(3)

challies.com