Why do People Visit My Website?

After a long period away from my blog, I was somewhat surprised to see a rather big jump in visits over the last three months. I wonder why my website gets more views now. WordPress says I get much more views than Google Analytics says. I like what WordPress says better.

Part of the discrepancy between WordPress and Google was that the Google script wasn't working. I fixed that, but Google still doesn't record as many visits. I wondered if WordPress was in error. Despite an increase in views, there was no increase in comments.

The pages viewed according to WordPress seemed reasonable. The top three pages (Home, Blog and Archive) remain the same.

There are a few long term favourites that are always in the top 20 pages viewed. Over the last few months, they have remained in the top 20.

• “2001: A Space Odyssey” and H. P. Lovecraft http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/2001-a-space-odyssey-and-h-p-lovecraft/
• “My Most Difficult Case” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-most-difficult-case/
• “Contingency” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/contingency/
• How Would Proportional Representation Change Canadian Politics? http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/how-would-proportional-representation-change-canadian-politics/
• Experiments With the Trial Version of nawmalMAKE http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/experiments-with-the-trial-version-of-nawmalmake/
• “The 89th Key” (my Doc Savage story) http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/
• “My Most Difficult Case” – Cast and Crew http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-most-difficult-case/my-most-difficult-case-cast-and-crew/

These pages and posts have been quite popular for some time, so it is no great surprise to see that they are still popular. “2001: A Space Odyssey” and H. P. Lovecraft have been popular topics elsewhere on the Internet for a long time. Proportional Representation, nawmalMAKE and Doc Savage have become popular topics recently. I don't really understand why the Cast and Crew page for “My Most Difficult Case” is popular.

A few of my older posts and pages have become more popular recently.

• “Make ’em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/make-em-squirm-the-sharkbiter-way/
• The History of the $100 Film Festival http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/articles/the-history-of-the-100-film-festival/
• “The 89th Key” – ePub Version http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-epub-version/
• “Our Wedding Vow” http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/our-wedding-vow/
• “The 89th Key” – HTML Version http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-89th-key/the-89th-key-html-version/
• “My Next Film” http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-next-film/

The $100 Dollar Film Festival recently celebrated its 25^th year, which is likely why my history of the festival would become more popular recently. The increased popularity of our wedding vow is linked to the recent death of my wife. I think about her often and our vow is very important to me.

I haven't posted much on my blog recently, but two of the posts did make it to the top 20.

• Back to Writing and Filmmaking http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/back-to-writing-and-filmmaking/
• Could Automation Replace the One Percent? http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/could-automation-replace-the-one-percent/

The popularity of my first post after my hiatus shows the kind of support I get from my friends and family. The fear of automation replacing people has become a hot topic recent, as has the one percent.

Over all, I don't see any clear reason why I had the increase of views on my website. There is no one post or page that stands out as drawing in more readers. Many of the same pages and posts remain at the top, but have gotten more views. The indications are that most of the visitors are not people who know me personally, so they wouldn't visit just to support me. While the relative popularity of some pages and posts can be explained for the most part, that doesn't explain why the number of views increased.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog