Happy blogiversary! Six years of Learning about the World!

Today marks the six-year anniversary of Learning about the World.

I must admit that it feels like I've slowed down a lot in recent months.  I moved to a new department at work in March of this year and a new role which has been quite demanding of my energy and creativity!  Rather than giving up on my blogging, I've decided to continue at a slower pace.

It's been hard work at times during the last six months and I've also felt a bit restricted by having my reading, listening, culture explorations limited to the place I'm currently blogging about - so I've branched out a bit recently and expanded the scope of my learning beyond this blog, which has also slowed me down (but hopefully not too much!)

To date, I've blogged about 39 countries/places around the world, including four new places since my last blogiversary: Palestine, Quebec, Reunion and (not yet finished) Solomon Islands.    Highlights of the past year have included listening to Palestinian music, discovering the movies of Xavier Dolan, reading in French and learning about the beachcombers of the South Pacific.

Some stats

Worldwide visits to Learning about the World

My blog has had 64,284 page views, almost a 40% increase since this time last year.  April this year saw the most page views ever in a single month at 2,582 so it seems that Learning about the World is more popular than ever!

It's interesting to compare the top twenty countries to my blog this year with last year - in general it seems as though the blog has been steadily growing in popularity in places like Australia, Canada, Germany and France.  Other countries seem to be losing interest (Saudi Arabia, Barbados, India), perhaps because my blog posts about those countries are 'older' now?

There are some new entries to the top 20 list; Kenya, Russia and China, whilst a few other countries have dropped out of the top 20 list (Belgium, Brazil and UAE).

The USA and UK continue to provide the majority of hits on my blog, with people in the US making up almost 35% of my readership in the past year.

The top twenty


1. United States (-)
2. United Kingdom (-)
3. Australia (+1)
4. Canada (+1)
5. India (-2)
6. Germany (+1)
7. France (+3)
8. Kenya (new!)
9. Netherlands (+6)
10. Italy (-4)
11. Cambodia (+1)
12. Russia (new!)
13. China (new!)
14. New Zealand (+2)
15. Malaysia (+4)
16. Spain (+2)
17. Japan (new!)

18. Saudi Arabia (-7)
19. Barbados (-5)
20. Ireland (-14)

The blog has had visitors from 166 countries in total (9 new countries since last year) and the newest country to appear on my readership list was Cameroon in July 2015.

Popular posts

You can see a list of the ten most popular posts of all time below:

And it's interesting to compare this with the ten most popular posts when I blogged about this last year:

Sum total of my learning

Since last September, in my pursuit of learning I have:

Read 21 books
Watched 18 movies
Learned how to cook 4 new dishes
Listened to countless hours of Palestinian rap, Leonard Cohen, maloya and Pacific reggae!

I'm looking forward to another year of learning, reading, cooking, movie-watching and blogging - don't forget to join me!

Happy Blogiversary! Learning about the World for five years now!

It's five years to the day since I published my first blog post on Learning about the World.  As a tribute to the 5th anniversary of this blog, I've coined a new word - blogiversary!

I've learned a lot over the past five years and documenting my learning experience has been incredibly rewarding, not to mention necessary, as otherwise I don't think I would be able to remember everything that I've learned.

To date, I've blogged about 35 countries/places around the world, including four new places since my last blogiversary: Liberia, Maharashtra, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Oaxaca.    Highlights of the past year have included discovering the works of Graham Greene, watching almost 30 hours of Bollywood musicals, falling in love with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and learning to cook a Mexican mole.

Some stats

Worldwide visits to Learning about the World

My blog has had 46,204 page views until just now and more than 10,000 of these have been in the last year.  Actually, August 2014 saw the most page views ever in a single month at 1,784 so Learning about the World is more popular than ever!

Having said that, unique visitor numbers since last September (3,670) are down slightly compared to the previous year, but the number of returning visitors has increased from 18% to 22%.  The average 'session duration' has also increased by 28.72%, which means that visitors are spending more time reading the blog than they used to - always a positive sign!

The top twenty countries in terms of visitors since last year are:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Italy
7. Germany
8. Ireland
9. Brazil

10. France
11. Saudi Arabia
12. Cambodia
13. Belgium
14. Barbados
15. Netherlands
16. New Zealand
17. United Arab Emirates
18. Spain
19. Malaysia
20. Indonesia

Whilst the United States still tops the list, the number of US readers has dropped by about 30% since last year, which is interesting and I wonder if it's related to the fact that I haven't blogged about the US during that period? The fact that there are 30% less readers from the US, yet overall visits are only marginally lower this year suggests that the blog has had more international readers than ever before.

India has pushed Australia out of the third place and I've seen a 20% increase in the number of Indian readers, which might, likewise, be due to the fact that I blogged about Maharashtra.

I've lost some countries from the top 20, such as Russia, Sweden and Fiji, but I've gained others, notably Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia!  The biggest increase for one country/place has been Jersey, where my number of readers has quadrupled!

The blog has had visitors from 157 countries in total (11 new countries since last year) and the newest country to appear on my readership list was Andorra in August 2014.

Popular posts

You can see a list of the ten most popular posts of all time below:

And it's interesting to compare this with the ten most popular posts when I blogged about this last year:

Sum total of my learning

Since last September, in my pursuit of learning I have:

Read 22 books
Watched 21 movies
Learned how to cook 4 new dishes
Listened to countless hours of classical music, Bollywood music, Mariachi and Son

I'm looking forward to another year of learning, reading, cooking, movie-watching and blogging - don't forget to join me!

Next up . . . P . . .