24 January 2012

My Most Popular Posts

The end of this week is the deadline for submitting material to Blog Carnivals Continue, and after racking my brain (a horrible phrase that refers to the medieval torture instrument 'the rack') for a favorite post I'm still clueless. I couldn't even decide which of my three blogs to choose from. While my chess960 blog gets less traffic than the other two, it includes material that, for me at least, is more interesting than the other two blogs.

What to do? Let the blogs' visitors decide. For each of my blogs, these are the most popular posts of all time according to the stats in Blogger.com.

Chess for All Ages

I can't be absolutely certain, but I suspect that popular posts get that way because they are near the top of the results for searches on their subjects. The post on 'Soviet Geography' is popular because people are looking for historical maps of the Soviet Union; 'Big Bang Chess' is popular because people search for exactly that; and 'CFAA' is popular because CFAA means something that I am unfamilar with (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?).

World Chess Championship Blog

Here's a real mystery: I have no real idea why the 'FIDE EB' is so popular. It has had more visits than the top three CFAA posts combined, even though the WCC blog gets a quarter of the traffic that CFAA gets. The post on 'Historical Ratings' is popular because there is a natural interest; I also get a lot of email on the subject. 'Qualifiers' is popular because people search for the list on a current World Cup without specifying which year they want.

Chess960 (FRC)

There's no mystery here. These three posts correspond to common topics of interest related to chess960. If my stats are any indicator, interest in chess960 is increasing slowly but steadily.

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