The only measures of a site like this are whether or not it helps or is fun, and whether or not you read it.
I can’t tell from my stats whether the site helps or is fun…
…but hundreds of thousands of you made your way here in 2010–four times as many as the year before.
Tens of thousands of you became frequent readers, with the number of frequent readers increasing by a factor of seven compared to 2009.
You came from more than 13,000 places in more than 180 countries.
I am humbled by your visits, and will keep trying to make the site better, and to add useful, new, interesting, and different material.
TOP 10 PLACES YOU COME FROM
More than 75% of you–even most of the repeat visitors- come to this site by a search engine.
Of the rest, about 1/3 of you come directly, by typing the site’s url or clicking on a bookmark, and about 2/3 come via a link.
Those who came from a link came from one of more than 50,000 links from almost a thousand different domains.
Excluding search engines, Facebook, Yahoo Answers and such, the following are the top ten domains you came from:
- Disboards.com. Disboards is the leading Disney community discussion board. I’ve never started a thread on Disboards, as I don’t want to spam it, but threads that others start generate thousands of visits to this site–and a lot of great criticisms and suggestions for improvement. See, for example, this discussion (I love its title!) and this one.
- One little link on About.com–here–drives a surprising amount of traffic to this site. The link is explained on the About.com page as an example itinerary, but it points to my Easter Itinerary, which only works for two or three not-recommended weeks of the year. I wish it pointed to my Basic Itinerary, Autumn-Winter-Spring Itinerary, or even the Summer Itinerary…
- DestinationsinFlorida.com is the website of the Disney-specialist travel agents I partner with and recommend. Traffic here comes from some guest posts I did for them, and other links they have to this site.
- OrlandoFlorida.net is another Disney discussion board.
- MilitaryDisneyTips.com is a great site for military families, and one I collaborate with quite a bit–for example, we worked together to publicize and break news about Disney’s latest military salute.
- Tikimanpages.com is a site devoted to the Polynesian Resort. Steve, the owner, kindly let me use his floor plans for my review of the Polynesian, and includes this site in his list of recommended sites.
- Viajandoparaorlando.com is a Brazilian Disney discussion board. Brazil is fourth highest on the list of countries which send this site the most traffic. According to Google Webmaster Tools, Viajandoparaorlando.com has more than 3,000 links to this site. I suspect this is an error…but on the other hand, it sets a nice benchmark for other referring sites to aspire to!
- thedibb.co.uk is a British Disney discussion board. The UK is third on the list of countries that send the most visitors.
- Community.babycenter.com is a general discussion board with an active Disney section
- Vivedisney.forumactif.net is a French-language Canadien Disney discussion board. Canada is second on the list of countries sending the most visitors.
TOP 10 OUTBOUND LINKS YOU CLICK
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2 Comments on "Thanks for a Great and Humbling Year…"
Thanks Steve!
Hi Dave,
Nice wrap-up to your great year! I didn’t realize you received so much traffic from overseas. I enjoyed seeing all of the sites that both link in to you and that you send traffic to.
You are to be congratulated on the outstanding job you do on this site. It’s a huge resource, full of great information.
Keep up the great work. Happy New Year, Steve