The death of Google Reader and the future of RSS
A few weeks ago, Google announced that they were shutting down Google Reader, the tool used by thousands of Offbeat Empire readers to follow our RSS feeds. I had some super strong feels when the announcement was made, because I’ve been personally using Google Reader pretty much daily since it launched 8 years ago. For those of us who digest a LOT of information online, RSS is an awesome method, and Google Reader was the best tool. While it was sad for me personally, it was mostly a theoretical sadness because honestly? I’d already switched to a new RSS reader a few months ago…
What do people search for on Offbeat Bride?
I spent some time peeking at my Google Site Search stats last week, and learned some things about the stuff that readers search for on Offbeat Bride. From the chart above, you can see that despite the fact that our traffic since 2009 has increased by 20% – 80% each year, the number of on-site searches have gradually declined. I like to think this is because we’ve made it easier to find content on the site without searching, but that may be optimistic of me.
Anyway, here are the top 20 search terms people have used when searching on Offbeat Bride:
2012 Reader Survey: the first-glance overview
Our 2012 reader survey closed late last night, and it looks like about 3200 of you responded. Before I get into anything else, let me just say THANK YOU to each and every one of you who took a few minutes to take the survey. Since all the Offbeat Empire sites are very much community-driven, it’s important to me to make sure I have a solid feel of who y’all are and what you’re looking for. We can’t always provide it, but I like to know!
Obviously, there’s a huge amount of data to sit with and consider, but I did want to share some of the overview demographics revealed by the survey.
A different kind of viral post
Today, Offbeat Mama is having its highest traffic day since launching in 2009 because a post called I’ve started telling my daughters I’m beautiful has gone viral. But it’s going viral in ways I’ve never seen before. If you like nerding out about this kind of thing, huddle up. Let’s take a look at how this post is different…