Tag Archives: cabbieblog

Statistics 2022

21 February, 2023 Gibson Square 3 Comments

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pages written

This year no new pages have appeared on CabbieBlog.

2021 – 0

2022 – 0

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

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

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.

Puppydog tails

Search Me!

24 January, 2023 Gibson Square 5 Comments

Here’s another one of those posts that has nothing to do with London, cabs or travel, unashamedly it’s a vanity trip to find just how universal CabbieBlog really is.

Using search engines, easily the most useful invention on the planet (with the possible exception of the wheel, electricity, the English language, sanitation, democracy and Worcestershire sauce), and, would you know it, there are more search engines than you can shake a stick at?

We don’t all use Google, not by a long shot. So here are the top 10 search engines and their ability to find this humble corner of the Cyberverse which is CabbieBlog:

Google (78.23% of market share; ranks CabbieBlog at #1) Simple, clean, functional (and sends lots of visitors my way, thank you).
Bing (8.04%; #1) Why is Bill Gates’ search engine so popular? It can only be the devious and underhand tactic of incorporating it in 90% of the world’s web browsers. Please say you never use it.
Baidu (7.34%; #1) No I had never heard of them either, Baidu absolutely dominates the Chinese market with 74.73% against Google’s 2% share of Chinese searches. Rather strange keying CabbieBlog into a page covered in Chinese characters, but it worked, so at least I’m not censored.
Yahoo! (3.39%; #1) I’m old enough to remember when Yahoo! search used to be the go-to, with a huge list of directories and subdirectories. They’re still there if you look hard enough, but it’s now much quicker to search without them. It’s a bloody stupid name anyway.
Yandex (1.53%; #1) is Russia’s most popular search engine, once used in Ukraine, which I suspect now uses Google.
Ask (0.72%; #12) To be fair to Ask, CabbieBlog might be at number 12 in their search results but was mentioned on other people’s sites at numbers 2, 3 and 4. Once known as Ask Jeeves it’s now just Ask, but that’s presumably because a lot of internet users can’t spell ‘Jeeves’.
DuckDuckGo (0.39%; #1) Also CabbieBlog ranks 2-5, thanks, guys. This search engine doesn’t harvest or store your information, which means you’re not bombarded with adverts, unlike these days with Google’s advert algorithms are urging me to buy my own book.
Naver (0.13%; #1) Me neither, but apparently with a 75 per cent market share it’s ‘The Google of South Korea’.
AOL (0.06%; #1) Short for ‘America Online’, which goes back to 1985, this pioneer of dial-up internet is almost forgotten, get your grandad to explain life before digital.
Seznam (0.05%; #1) This Czechoslovakian search engine put me in the first 6 slots and even gave me an English translation. Thanks, guys.

I’m delighted to see that my blog is the number 1 result for “CabbieBlog” in every single one of the above search engines (except for Ask, but who these days uses them?).

Special mention to Ecosia which uses money from advertising to plant trees around the world to benefit the environment and local economies. Ecosia’s homepage keeps score of the number of trees planted, over 163 million at the time of writing, they also ranked CabbieBlog in the first 6 slots.

My favourite incidentally, is Ecosia, this search engine doesn’t store your searches permanently, use external tracking tools, or sell your data to advertisers. Your searches are encrypted and you can simply turn off all of Ecosia’s tracking if you want. What’s more, it’s transparent about how it spends its money, releasing regular financial reports. In October 2018, founder Christian Kroll gave some of his shares to the Purpose Foundation. As a result, Kroll and Ecosia co-owner Tim Schumacher forfeited their rights to take profits out of the company or sell Ecosia for a profit in the future – talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

These days of climate change becoming ever more frightening it seems planting trees using the Internet is the least you can do, I always search here before I turn to Google. Now, which search engine do you use?

A window on My World

Unsolicited mail

19 July, 2022 Gibson Square 2 Comments

Those of you who have too much time on their hands might have noticed a redesigned Contact Page on CabbieBlog, which now has a contact form, replacing an email address that, in an unguarded moment, I had foolishly given out for those who – well – wanted to contact me.

Plenty of tech-savvy people, upon discovering that email address, were then encouraged to inform me that my site was in need of improvement, which was very kind of them.

Olivia told me she was:

…always looking for good quality websites and when I found your website today, I was really intrigued by the content. I know you’re very busy [I’m not, having retired], so the point is I’m reaching out to you about an awesome partnership that I think would really benefit your audience. Do you accept guest posts? I actually write about some of the topics that are covered in your blog and would like to contribute to your site.

If Olivia had spent time looking at my ‘quality’ website she would have found the page helpfully titled ‘Write a Post’.

Lorna admired the look of CabbieBlog and was gushing in her praise:

I was examining your website and see you have a good design and it looks great. But it was not ranking on Google and other major search engine.

While Swadesh begged to differ with this critique:

Would you be interested in a possible Design/redesigning of the websites or designing new website, with addition feature that might benefit the overall usability and user experience which usually leads to better sales.

I’m always being asked for advice about The Knowledge but I couldn’t help this contact who shall remain anonymous:

Hello I just came across your blog, and I am interested in doing the knowledge, my problem is if I am going somewhere, like yesterday I get anxious if I do not know my way. I went to Tatershall Castle, I checked beforehand and it said 4 minutes from Embankment station, I took the wrong turning, I had to ask several people including Cabbies, to get there, it is always the same I am going somewhere new even when people, give me precise direction I still find it difficult, do you recommend the knowledge?

My advice would be try looking in that river outside Embankment Station as the Tattershall Castle is a rather large ship.

Following the deluge of unsolicited email I was reminded:

As Stress Awareness Month approaches, the latest statistics once again demonstrate how important it is for employers to familiarise themselves with the signs and symptoms of stress, especially as an increase in the cost of living threatens to compound the issues faced by many.

Maybe just maybe if I received less bumph I wouldn’t be as stressed.

A window on My World

Statistics 2021

25 February, 2022 Gibson Square 4 Comments

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.