Month: November 2008

Friday Five: Top fives from a year of Google Analytics

I spent a little time on Wednesday poking around my Google Analytics account for this blog to see what’s happened over the past year (Nov. 26, 2007-Nov. 26, 2008). Here’s some of the info Google provided, all in the Friday Five format we know and love.

Top five most popular posts

  1. The habits of social network addicts, posted March 20, 2008
  2. del.icio.us as a PR measurement tool, posted April 23, 2008
  3. Breaking news: Northern Illinois University shooting, posted Feb. 14, 2008
  4. Friday Five: Q&A with Roy Adler and Tom Hayes, authors of ‘University Marketing Mistakes’, posted Feb. 22, 2008
  5. Traffic patterns from a PR campaign: a brief, shallow case study of Missouri S&T’s spacebook blog, posted Nov. 21, 2008

Top five referral sites — higher ed blogs only

  1. BlogHighEd.org
  2. CollegeWebEditor.com
  3. .eduGuru
  4. SquaredPeg
  5. F.J. Gaylor

Top five keywords/search terms

  1. kiss rule, which has nothing to do with the ’70s rock band
  2. higher ed marketing — the name of this blog
  3. marketing higher education — what we talk about here
  4. chris simpson, the co-founder of SimpsonScarborough who passed away earlier this year
  5. unused logos — your guess is as good as mine

Five most interesting keywords/search terms that didn’t make the top five in frequency

  1. paris hilton facebook — No. 6 on the list
  2. rainbow radiohead
  3. easy sex
  4. secret sex
  5. jayhawk font

Five interesting geographic tidbits

  1. Fairbanks, Alaska, is the northernmost U.S. location from which visitors came to this site (six visits over the past year). This blog also had one visitor from Wasilla. I hope it was Sarah Palin.
  2. Whitehorse, Canada, was the northernmost non-U.S. origin for a visitor.
  3. Palmerstown North, New Zealand, appears to be the easternmost origin of visitors to this site.
  4. Dunedin, New Zealand, appears to be the southernmost. Two mentions for the Kiwis.
  5. Greenland did not send any visitors to this site over the past year. Neither did Myanmar, Afghanistan, Laos, Turkmenistan, Libya and several countries in central and sub-Saharan Africa.

Giving thanks

[M]y main prayers are help me, help me, help me and thank you, thank you, thank you. – Anne Lamott, author (source)

A lot of the U.S. readers of this blog will probably spend the next couple of days overindulging in food and drink, televised sports, and family gatherings. Ergo, they won’t be checking the blogs much.

But just in case you do log on (to escape the in-laws, or football, or for whatever reason), I wanted to take up this space during this time of year to say “thank you, thank you, thank you” to all of you readers. I know you have limited time and many other things to do, so I’m honored that you take the time to visit, and I hope that, more often than not, you find something here that made it worth the effort.

Wishing everyone in the U.S. a Happy Thanksgiving. And to everyone else around the world, let the same spirit of thanksgiving be present in your lives as well.