And the most popular blog post in 2022 was…
Since this site started in 2009, I’ve been keeping an eye on which is the most popular blog post with readers. It’s a little trip down memory lane, showing how my own interests and my audience has evolved over time.
Here’s the latest round-up:
- 2022: Latest general election voting intention opinion polls – see 2021, 2020 and 2019. What the All Blacks are to rugby, my polling round-up is to this blog, thanks in particular to Google’s continued love of putting it high up in search results. The second most popular post has a similar wide reach to non-regular readers. FBPE: what does this hashtag mean? is now three years old, but its continued popularity is due to the hashtag still being widely used on Twitter and, judging by the traffic statistics, widely puzzling people as to its meaning. They hit search and come here.
- 2021: Latest general election voting intention opinion polls – see 2020. Three years in a row it’s been polls that have been the most read story. It this continues, I may have to introduce a new rule to disqualify my poll round-ups…
- 2020: Latest general election voting intention opinion polls – we may have only been in the first year after a general election, but people still liked looking at opinion polls. As in 2019, Google search took a shine to this post making it the most popular in the year.
- 2019: General election voting intention polls – my running tally of the latest voting intention polls which Google took a shine to and so scooped up huge volumes of search traffic in the run-up to the general election. (I had tried a similar idea before but this time around, a combination of luck and increased experience means the idea really took off.)
- 2018: Jeremy Corbyn’s views on Brexit: a long held stance on Europe – originally written purely for myself to get information together in one place, it’s turned out to be a quite a hit. Due much more I’m sure, to Jeremy Corbyn’s own prevarications, than to my own efforts.
- 2017: How Theresa May could lose the general election (it’s much more likely than the media think) – the scenario I painted didn’t come to fruition, even if the overall conclusion that a Theresa May landslide was not a slam dunk turned out right.
- 2016: How the Tories could lose their Parliamentary majority, courtesy of the police and the voters – a forerunner to that 2017 post and illustrating the pattern that my occasional forays into wider political speculation, especially if given a more dramatic headline, often draw in a much wider readership than my hardcore Lib Dem coverage.
- 2015: Been called by 020 3634 9821? Steer clear and lodge a complaint – one of the advantages of having a website that is well-established from a search engine optimisation (SEO) point of view, and of knowing a thing or two about SEO, is that when a company behaves badly, I can both work of the angst and help others by sticking content online which many other people with then find.
- 2014: A beautiful, moving poppy display at the Tower of London – given how much coverage there rightly was of this First World War anniversary poppy display, it’s still a bit of a mystery to me why this post did quite so well in search during 2014, propelling it to the most read status for the year. An extension of the above SEO point really – do the right things and sometimes you hit lucky.
- 2013 – Got an automated sales call from 0161 814 9565 (DS Financial Services)? – see 2015.
- 2012 – Why you should feed the trolls – still good advice, if I say so myself.
- 2011 – Could you edit The Guardian? Take a simple test – a cry of pain at the idea that you don’t need to know about a topic to do an interview. The Guardian was well ahead of Michael Gove in dismissing the role of experts. (More data from 2011 here.)
- 2010 – General election and local election timetable, 2010 – sometimes the simplest posts are the most useful. (More data from 2010 here.)
- 2009 – Guardian injunction: Liberal Democrats table urgent question – ah the Trafigura affair.
- 2008 and previous years: my posts appeared on other sites, such as Lib Dem Voice, so no data for those years back to 2006.
Note: this list only covers my blog posts, and so misses out perennial hits such as my page on what the Lib Dems believe or that page about a book. The data also excludes any posts removed, replaced or merged into others.
Why do all the pictures from local Lib Dem parties look like Saga excursions snaps? True, in the photo below, from Aberconwy, I see some young faces in the background. But they are generally in the background. This absence of young faces is even worse at Lib Dem party conferences when you watch them on BBC Parliamentary channel in real time. I am myself only a year short of the free bus pass, but recognise that youthful faces convey dynamism and optimism. Older faces, mine included, do not. All ages should be represented in the party. And that includes the young. Can they be fished out from the back row and asked to come to the front when pictures are taken.
I suppose you could do a good interview while knowing little about the subject, by asking the basic questions and thereby educating other people not in the know. What really annoys me is journalists writing articles without checking the facts. One writing about popular reaction to a particularly gut-wrenching murder case fliply referred to “the Christian doctrine of original sin” and managed to precisely reverse that doctrine’s meaning so that it meant some were born irretrievably born evil and others not. Regrettably, some obituaries of Paddy Ashdown managed to suggest that he invented community politics and none I saw mentioned David Penhaligon’s influence on him. If the article-writer doesn’t check the facts, the misrepresentation may become generally accepted.