If you’re thinking of advertising on idratherbewriting.com, it’s important to get a sense of the traffic and analytics of the audience so that your ad not only has visibility, but visibility with the right audience.
In 2020, idratherbewriting.com had 1,814,770 page views, or about 4,971 page views a day (207 page views an hour). More specifically, users created 1,195,729 sessions, with 1.52 pages per session and an average of 1:25 minutes per session.
Overall page views
Here’s a breakdown of site traffic analytics on idratherbewriting.com from Jan 1, 2019 through Dec 31, 2019, according to Google Analytics. The blue line represents 2019, while the brown line represents 2014 for comparison.
For historical comparison, here’s a graph that shows the growth of the site from its inception in 2006 through 2020.
Traffic was fairly consistent from 2010 through 2017. In 2017, I added the API documentation site, which accounted for a lot of growth.
Analytics breakdown
The following table includes more details from other Google Analytics reports. To make the data more meaningful, I’ve provided data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 to compare the changes from one year to the next. I also round data to the nearest whole number (e.g., 1.51% is rounded to 2%; 1.49% is rounded to 1%).
| 2018 -> 2019 -> 2020 | Count |
|---|---|
| Page views | 1,552,615 -> 1,974,524 -> 1,814,770 |
| Average page views per day | 4,253 -> 5,409 -> 4,971 |
| Average page views per hour | 177 -> 225 -> 207 |
| Unique page views | 1,331,869 -> 1,704,059 -> 1,592,088 |
| Average time on page | 2:40 -> 2:40 -> 2:43 |
| Users | 687,818 -> 909,236 -> 916,922 |
| Sessions | 942,306 -> 1,207,264 -> 1,195,729 |
| Sessions per user | 1.37 -> 1.33 -> 1.30 |
| Avg. Session Duration | 1.44 -> 1.41 -> 1.25 |
| Average session duration | 1:44 -> 1:41 -> 1.25 |
| Page views per session | 1.65 -> 1.64 -> 1.52 |
| Bounce rate | 78% -> 78% -> 81% |
| Organic search traffic (unpaid search traffic) | 72% -> 85% -> 89% |
| Traffic from social | 5,596 -> 6,373 -> 7,813 |
| Social site breakdown | Linkedin: 49% -> 42% -> 47% Facebook: 20% -> 15% -> 9% Twitter: 17% -> 23% -> 18% |
| Location | US: 35% -> 32% -> 29% India: 16% -> 17% -> 19% UK: 5% -> 5% -> 5% |
| Browser | Chrome: 73% -> 76% -> 78% Safari: 9% -> 8% -> 8% Firefox: 9% -> 9% -> 8% |
| Device category | desktop: 86% -> 88% -> 88% mobile: 12% -> 11% -> 12% tablet: 1.7% -> 1.1% -> 0.6% |
| Mobile device type | iPhone: 37% -> 38% -> 37% iPad: 7% -> 6% -> 3% |
| Operating System | Windows: 60% -> 59% -> 57% Mac: 20% -> 21% -> 23% Android + iOS: 13% -> 12% -> 12% |
| Age | 18-24: 18% -> 15% -> 22% 25-34: 48% -> 52% -> 46% 35-44: (23% -> 22% -> 18%) 45-54: 8% -> 7% -> 8% 55-64: 3% -> 2% -> 3% |
| Gender | male: 72% -> 73% -> 75% female: 28% -> 27% -> 25% |
All of this information is provided through Google Analytics by default. (I don’t have any special scripts or other tracking cookies other than what Google adds through Google Analytics. Also note that I’m not sure how Google tracks age and gender. Google also tracks hobby categories, though I haven’t shown it here.)
API doc traffic percentage
In 2018, 59% of my site traffic came to my API documentation site (/learnapidoc/. In 2019, that percentage jumped up to 72%. In 2019, this percentage further climbed to 75%.
Here’s a graph showing the percentage in 2019:
And then in 2020:
The traffic from the API documentation visitors is outperforming other traffic sources, with 3 out of every 4 visitors going to the API documentation site.
Top 10 API doc pages
The top 10 most popular pages are as follows:
- Step 3: Parameters (API reference tutorial)
- Documenting APIs: A guide for technical writers and engineers
- Swagger UI tutorial
- Step 2: Endpoints and methods (API reference tutorial)
- Access and print a specific JSON value
- Activity: Use methods with curl
- Activity: Use the GitHub Desktop client
- Submit requests through Postman
- OpenAPI tutorial using Swagger Editor and Swagger UI: Overview
- Step 5: Response example and schema (API reference tutorial)
Because of the interest in the API doc site, I have continued to add to it. It is a living site, with constantly updated and evolving content.
Posts analyzing site analytics
For more details about analytics, see the following posts. These posts expand on audience interests and demographics.
- 2020 — Site analytics for 2020 – trends, reflections, and thoughts
- 2019 — Reflections on my 2019 site analytics
- 2018 — Site analytics from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2018 – are more engineers writing docs now?
- 2017 — Unexpected realizations after a comprehensive review of my 2017 site metrics
- 2016 — Analyzing top posts on my blog during 2015 — Deciding between brand versus readership
- 2015 — Top 10 posts, podcasts, tweets of 2014 – and what it all means
Quality of impressions
The quality of impressions depends on the influence of the site. Impressions from a highly influential site carry more weight than impressions from a less influential site. In earlier years, several companies ranked the most influential bloggers in tech comm. Their categories shifted more broadly and eventually people stopped creating these influencer lists. Links to previous rankings are below.
- Top 25 Content Experience Influencer 2017
- Top 25 Content Strategist Influencer 2016
- Most Valuable Professional #2014, Indigo Byte Systems.
- #3 Influencer in #techcomm in 2014
- #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2013
- #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2012
- Most innovative tech comm blogger of 2011
- #2 Influencer in #techcomm 2010
If you look at my Presentations, you can see that I’ve also given more than 100 presentations during the past decade.