Category Archives: A window on My World

Statistics 2021

This last year will go down in the history of CabbieBlog. It started with a fairly healthy number of hits, with the previous month (December 2020) having the highest number ever, with everyone at home the hit rate was bound to rise. Unfortunately with everyone returning to the home office numbers have been on a downward slide this year, although it is reassuring that CabbieBlog has attracted a core of regular readers and commentators. Thank You All.

Never content with CabbieBlog’s appearance again minor changes have been made: social icons, a Ko-Fi donation button and weekly London Quote. London Grill has made a reappearance and at the start of every month a quiz titled Test Your Knowledge, thank you all for contributing and taking part.

On a less upbeat side, I’ve been trying to cope with WordPress’s Block Editor and found it impossible – see last Tuesday’s post.

So with more information than is reasonably necessary, here are the annual blogging statistics for 2021. 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.


Blog visitors and page views

Difficult to gauge, for instance, CabbieBlog has 173 followers on Bloglovin’ so none of their views will be recorded, but according to my basic counter the numbers of visitors has increased, but those willing to loiter around have also increased.  CabbieBlog has attracted a number of regular readers, which, I suspect have found their way from BeetleyPete, which is very encouraging. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2020 – 1.6118; 2021 – 1.6216). This year sees an increase of 13 per cent I the number of visitors and page views.

2020
Visitors – 28,403
Pageviews – 45,781

2021
Visitors – 31,986
Pageviews – 51,871


CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad

The different countries whose residents have viewed CabbieBlog again include Jersey (at 19), Guernsey (at 5) and Isle of Man (at 10), as if they were sovereign countries in their own right and curiously the European Union (at 14). The United States leads our curious cousins with 7,133 a rise since last year’s 5,544 hits.

2020 – 137 individual countries

2021 – 140 individual countries


Number of comments

The yardstick of a blog must be how many of its readers decided to metaphysically put pen to paper and comment, and this year, despite, or because of COVID-19, has seen exponential growth of 76 per cent. 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 that it gives us. There is a number who regularly comment on my posts, and whose posts I visit and comment on too. I’ve never met any of them in ‘real-life,’ or even spoken on the phone or by one of the messaging apps, but they feel like friends like we’re in a community together. And sometimes we get a kind of chat going in the comments too, which I always enjoy. To all of you, again a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement. Your comments keep me submitting regular posts for your perusal. I’m delighted, obviously.

2020 – 169

2021 – 296


Number of ‘Likes’

When you have a super, intelligent and engaging blog that is blessed with visitors that clearly repeatedly like to Like, you are in a favourable position. On 15th November 2021 the Burghers of WordPress informed me that CabbieBlog has received a total of 1,000 Likes during its lifetime. So you see the Likes are on a huge upward trend, again a huge thank you for touching the ­­­Like button at the foot of every post.

2020 – 359

2021 – 739


Followers of CabbieBlog

My e-mail updates only include a brief description so many of you will have had to peruse the site to read the full post. I can’t calculate how many times you have taken the trouble to follow these notifications and read my inciteful posts, but thanks for following CabbieBlog.

2020 – 1,315

2021 – 1,368


Posts written

Most of this year’s output has been new material, although Monday’s Quotations were not obviously written by me and therefore are not included in the count. This year’s increase is mainly from the addition of Wednesday’s Johnson’s London.

2020– 209

2021 – 231


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.

2020
Highest post
London myths debunked – 2,282
Lowest Post
Site Unseen: Gwynne House– 15
Highest page
13 Survivors – 1,491
Lowest page
Privacy Policy – 15

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


Pages written

This year no new pages have appeared on CabbieBlog.

2020 – 0

2021 – 0


Number of words written

My average output of about 1,500 words written each week has remained virtually the same this year as for last year.

2020
Words – 84,748
Characters – 489,994

2021
Words – 83,468
Characters – 487,420


Referrers

If you ignore the search engines, clocking up an impressive 25,300 hits, social media referrers are Twitter at 413 and, surprisingly, as I haven’t an account, Facebook at 1,739.

2021
Diamond Geezer
The Telephone Box

2022
Wikipedia
Diamond Geezer


In conclusion

This post is, of course, my highlight of the year, it also takes the longest to write, unfortunately, my readers don’t share my enthusiasm. Last year only 42 of you bothered to click on Statistics 2020, with only 4 viewing this incisive post since last March.

“Busy night?”

Contrary to the popular perception that all cabbies like to chat, punters are also guilty of asking, well, some pretty banal questions.

“Busy Night?”

The problem for the driver here is two-fold: if he answers in the affirmative the punter might be weighing up the opportunity of mugging him; conversely, if he says it’s quiet the passenger queries the reason why it took so long to catch a cab or thinks the cabbie just wants to moan and soon the conversation will turn to the shortcomings of the current Government/England manager/or London’s Mayor.

“What do you do for a living?”

Passengers sometimes enquire politely about what we do for a living. This is not, as you might expect, a unique occurrence on long, late-night journeys, and sometimes asked more than once by the same passenger.

“What time are you on ‘til?”

Many cabbies work the more lucrative evening shift, so the punter probably feels a degree of sympathy as he clocked off work at five. The supplementary inquiry “Can you pick me up?” at a time and place to get me home like we are going to drive halfway across London helping you get the last train home.

“Where do you live? Or live far?”

Why on earth should that be a topic of conversation with a stranger unless, of course, you want a lift home – see the previous inquiry.

“What chance is there of me getting a cab?”

Ditto.

In Ireland one private hire driver, after being repeatedly asked these futile questions has stuck onto the vehicle’s partition screen a notice reading:


Please Don’t ask futile personal quizzes. I am from Ghana, now an Irish citizen. Yes I like it here. I have a Master’s Degree (MBA) UK. Please show due esteem.

The message went viral on Twitter, at the time of writing had received over 166,000 likes and had been shared more than 12,500 times.

However with over 1,000 replies, inevitably some thought the message was a ‘bit rude’. One comment read:

It’s a bit rude, to be honest. What’s wrong with asking him where he is from originally (presuming he doesn’t have an Irish accent) and whether he likes it here. Having a bit of futile chat is part of what we are.

Another response from Eion Dunning read:

Man in customer service hates customers. Best of luck to him.

John Parsons response was:

As an Irishman living in England for thirty years, I often get asked where I’m from . . . hell, even Irish people ask me where I’m from, they also often ask me if I like England. It’s called fu#king small talk.

Ride-hailing app Uber backed up the driver’s actions saying:

Getting straight to the point is a highly underrated attribute these days.

Others joked that the driver needs a second sign displaying whether he has been busy and what time he finishes.

I know those questions well.