I have been thinking lately about the purpose of CabbieBlog and the answer isn’t easily definable. I could give the BBC’s mantra: to inform, educate and entertain, but really it’s about what interests me in London, rather than a crusade to inform, although health issues and the publication of my memoir have made this a struggle at times.

Anyone who regularly peruses this corner of cyberspace would realise that I like order, now I’m posting 7 days a week, and every day has a specific subject allocated to it, and not only that, posts are always available at 13.50 London time. To break with this – some might say obsession – I’ve started Unblogged London on Substack a fairly new platform on which I aim to write long-form essays at irregular intervals, and not always at the same time of day. However, breaking with regularity I’m finding it challenging.

What sets CabbieBlog apart from the millions of websites and thousands of London blogs? Firstly I like to think that if you’re not interested in reading what some 18th-century poet wrote about the capital you can ignore the Monday post, likewise, Thursday’s whinge by me can, should you wish, be given a miss. The three days I write about London will always be no more than a 5-minute read and, unlike many London websites, somewhere that I’ve visited recently or driven there at one time in a cab.

So with more information than you probably wanted to know about me, here are the annual blogging statistics for 2022. As before, with the data amassed over the last year, I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks with comparable figures for the previous year.

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Blog visitors and page views

Now everyone has returned to work after laying on the sofa watching Cash In The Attic while waiting for the epidemic to abate, visitors to CabbieBlog have inevitably dropped, in fact by 17 per cent. These figures don’t include those who lazily use an RSS feed to gather posts to peruse. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2021 – 1.6216; 2022 – 1.5461).

2021
Visitors – 31,986
Pageviews – 51,871

2022
Visitors – 27,686
Pageviews – 42,807

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CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad

This year has seen a drop in the number of individual countries checking out CabbieBlog. This year we welcomed our first hit from the Åland Islands, apparently, it’s a Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Baltic Sea comprising around 6,700 islands, whoever you are, welcome. The United States leads our curious cousins with 5,623 a drop of 1,523 hits since last year.

2021 – 140 individual countries

2022 – 129 individual countries

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Number of comments

The yardstick of a blog must be how many of its readers decided to metaphysically put pen to paper and comment. I’ve said it before, one of the delights of blogging for me – and one of the things that keep me going – is the interaction with others. To all of you, particularly those individuals who post comments daily, yes Pete, I’m talking to you. Again a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement. Your comments keep me submitting regular posts for your perusal.

2021 – 592

2022 – 557

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Number of ‘Likes’

When you have a super, intelligent and engaging blog that is blessed with visitors that repeatedly like to Like, you are in a favourable position. CabbieBlog now gets three times the Likes that it did two years ago. Thank you for touching the Like button found at the foot of every post.

2021 – 739

2022 – 1,045

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Followers of CabbieBlog

For reasons, known only to WordPress, they now only provide me with information on the number who have subscribed to receive post notifications by email. Even so, the number has risen marginally, thanks to all of you for following CabbieBlog, however you receive notifications of postings.

2021 – 1,368

2022 – 1,410

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Posts written

Monday’s Quotations obviously are not written by me and therefore are not included in the count. Likewise Previously Posted are not included in these figures as they were, well previously posted. This year’s increase is mainly due to now posting 7 days a week.

2021– 178

2022 – 292

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Most viewed and least viewed posts and pages

It has to be said that some subjects take on a life of their own, while others just sit in cyberspace minding their own business. At the bottom lie many posts with only a few views a year, and some I suspect just sit there patiently waiting to be noticed.

2021
Highest post
London’s top-secret tower – 1,303
Lowest Post
Extreme London – 17
Highest page
The Knowledge – 2,846
Lowest page
The small print – 20

2022
Highest post
Who remembers the characters of London? – 1,259
Lowest Post
Shakespeare in Love – 13
Highest page
The Knowledge – 2,482
Lowest page
The small print – 17

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Pages written

This year no new pages have appeared on CabbieBlog.

2021 – 0

2022 – 0

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Number of words written

The addition of Weekly Whinge and continuing with Johnson’s London curiously haven’t increased this year’s word count, I must be writing shorter posts these days.

2021
Words – 83,468
Characters – 487,420

2022
Words – 72,478
Characters – 425,158

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Referrers

If you ignore the search engines, clocking up an impressive 21,100 hits, social media referrers are Twitter at 1,507 and, surprisingly, as I haven’t an account, Facebook at 793. These are the top independent referrers.

2021
Diamond Geezer  – 58
Bloglovin – 46

2022
A London Inheritance -66
Diamond Geezer – 21

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In conclusion

Having reached the end of this post, you’re in very rarefied company, in fact, only 26 read this last year, mostly in February with only four viewing this incisive post since last March.