A bit of fun: most popular pages

Updates

I’m a numbers nerd, as you may have figured out from a previous blog entry. I decided to take a look at what my most popular pages are currently and compare them to the total number of page views each one has had since I created the site in October 2013. So, let’s take a look at the Top 10:

Most viewed pages (October 2013 to present)

10. Yosemite maps
9. Grand Teton maps
8. Death Valley maps
7. Mount Rainier maps
6. Glacier maps
5. Zion maps
4. Grand Canyon maps
3. Joshua Tree maps
2. Big Bend maps
1. Bryce Canyon maps

Unexpected! I can’t totally figure out why some pages do better than others. For example, Grand Teton maps has 37 for free download, while Bryce Canyon only has 7. Then you’ve got Big Bend with 13 and Joshua Tree with 34. My worst pages seem to be the ones with fewest maps – not totally unexpected – but among the top-viewed, there isn’t a strong correlation. Now let’s see what pages are currently the most viewed:

Most viewed pages (January 1, 2016 to present)

10. Yosemite maps (+0)
9. Glacier maps (-3)
8. Mount Rainier maps (-1)
7. Sequoia maps (+4)
6. Zion maps (-1)
5. Grand Canyon maps (-1)
4. Bryce Canyon maps (-3)
3. Death Valley maps (+5)
2. Joshua Tree maps (+1)
1. Big Bend maps (+1)

If anything, I’m surprised at how steady it’s been! Generally speaking, things are ranked pretty similarly to how they’ve been overall. Some of the parks with high winter visitation – Big Bend, Joshua Tree, and Death Valley – are understandably more popular right now; they’ll surely drop in the rankings come summer. But otherwise, no major changes, other than seeing Sequoia make it onto the list and Grand Teton drop off of it.

That’s it. No major revelations or fascinating trends, but sometimes that’s just how research works. Going into this, I thought I’d have something more interesting to say…but apparently I was wrong. If I was really feeling ambitious, I could look at past dates and pull up web statistics see if there are some interesting seasonal variations. But I’m not feeling ambitious. So, that’ll just have to wait.