What a year – more ideas and more clicks

It was another year of growth for the GravitationalPull blog in 2010, with total visits up about 25% to 45,000 and total page views rising 23% to around 54,000 according to Google Analytics. I wrote 45 posts, up slightly from the 42 you got in 2009. As per the last few years, traffic spiked dramatically for just one or two controversial posts. Last year, it was my recent post on switching from an iPhone to the Google Nexus S running Android that sent the visitor count off the charts.

The top 10 posts by traffic in 2010 were as follows:

1. How to fix a stuck keyboard backlight on a MacBook Pro
2. Using a new HDMI  Mac Mini with my TV: Early days
3. Best way to sync Mac and Google contacts? There isn’t one
4. Find the best Blu-Ray movies ’cause some don’t look so good
5. Apple’s Time capsule plays nice with Verizon’s FIOS
6. What it’s really like to switch to the Nexus S Android Phone from an iPhone
7. Kindle for Mac review: Just the basics
8. Page: Physics of Gravity
9. Apple LED Cinema display is the best dock for a MacBook Pro
10. Google slashes price of online storage vs. Apple, others

(The list excludes my front page which got a total of about 8% of views)

Some of those old 2008 chestnuts are still hanging in, including the simple how-to on unsticking the keyboard backlight and the look at how Time Capsule and FiOS mixed. A couple of my favorites from the year just passed didn’t make the list, particularly “Sexting, your lack of privacy and the iPad” and “How true is The Social Network? Entirely and not at all.” But the revised side column with a list of five of my favorite posts did nothing to attract clicks so I’ll have to revisit that strategy. I think the whole side column here could use a good re-think in 2011.

Thanks should be given to those (beyond the search engines) who sent visitors, led by the useful headlines site MacSurfer.com, my pal Shabbir Safdar’s personal blog and all of the good ebook folks at Teleread.org.

Visitors in 2010 mainly used the Safari and Firefox browsers with Internet Explorer falling to an all-time low market share of under 18%. Chrome showed up at 12%. Surprisingly, Mac and Windows users were equally split at about 46% each. Only about 6% of visitors were on mobile devices, with iPhones and iPads comprising the vast majority. We’ll have to watch the Android trend line because it starts from a low base of 0.49% in 2010.

Just as an aside, the spoof/ego-feeding self-interview I did based on/as an homage to Wafer Baby’s the SetUp interviews, got another 1,000-ish views and 900 or so visitors on its own, thanks largely to Wafer baby adding it to his page of links. And he’s since changed the format — oh well.