In 2021, idratherbewriting.com had 1,865,635 page views, or about 5,111 page views a day (213 page views an hour). More specifically, users created 1,266,999 sessions, with 1.47 pages per session and an average of 1:19 minutes per session.

Overall page views

Here’s a breakdown of site traffic analytics on idratherbewriting.com for 2021 according to Google Analytics.

Site traffic graph
I'd Rather Be Writing received 1,865,635 page views during 2021. This works out to an average of 5,111 page views a day.

For historical trends, here’s a graph that shows the growth of the site from its inception in 2006 through 2021.

Traffic in 2014 vs 2021
Traffic growth from 2006 through 2021.

Traffic was fairly consistent from 2010 through 2017. In 2017, I added the API documentation site, which provided 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 2019, 2020, and 2021 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%).

Metric 2019 -> 2020 -> 2021
Page views 1,974,524 -> 1,814,770 -> 1,865,635
Average page views per day 5,409 -> 4,971 -> 5,111
Average page views per hour 225 -> 207 -> 213
Unique page views 1,704,059 -> 1,592,088 -> 1,865,635
Average time on page 2:40 -> 2:43 -> 2:48
Users 909,236 -> 916,922 -> 982,313
Sessions 1,207,264 -> 1,195,729 -> 1,266,999
Sessions per user 1.33 -> 1.30 -> 1.29
Avg. session duration 1:41 -> 1:25 ->1:19
Page views per session 1.64 -> 1.52 -> 1.47
Bounce rate 78% -> 81% -> 82%
Organic search traffic (unpaid search traffic) 85% -> 89% -> 90%
Traffic from social 6,373 -> 7,813 -> 11,346
Social site breakdown Linkedin: 42% -> 47% ->44%
YouTube: 8% -> 13 %-> 19%
Facebook: 15% -> 9% ->8%
Twitter: 23% -> 18% -> 11%
Location US: 32% -> 29% ->25%
India: 17% -> 19% ->20%
UK: 5% -> 5% ->4%
Browser Chrome: 76% -> 78% -> 77%
Safari: 8% -> 8% -> 9%
Firefox: 9% -> 8% ->7%
Device type desktop: 88% -> 88% ->86%
mobile: 11% -> 12% -> 14%
tablet: 1.1% -> 0.6% -> 0.5%
Mobile device type iPhone: 38% -> 37% -> 40%
iPad: 6% -> 3% -> 2%
Operating System Windows: 59% -> 57% ->56%
Mac: 21% -> 23% ->23%
Android + iOS: 12% -> 12% ->14%
Age 18-24: 15% -> 22% ->26%
25-34: 52% -> 46% -> 41%
35-44: (22% -> 18% ->18%)
45-54: 7% -> 8% ->9%
55-64: 2% -> 3% ->4%
Gender male: 73% -> 75% ->70.6%
female: 27% -> 25% ->29.4

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 2020, this percentage climbed to 75%. And in 2021, 76%. Here’s a graph showing the traffic trends to all /learnapidoc pages from 2017 to 2021.

API documentation traffic
The traffic to my API documentation site accounted for 76% of the overall site traffic in 2021.

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:

Because of the interest in the API doc site, I have continued to add to it, treating it as 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.