Critical Hits is Two!

Though the exact date of our start is undetermined- we were posting under a different name and address before we bought Critical Hits- today is a good enough time to celebrate us finishing our second year of posting, and entering our third!

We did a little bit of reminiscing on our “One Year Later” post (and hopefully were able to implement most of the suggestions made then) and asked about our readers recently. Here is a more “behind the scenes” approach, with some bulleted lists of our various stats. We only installed tracking software about a year ago, so many of these stats are relevant only for the previous year and will be noted as such. Our traffic has increased quite a bit in the past year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers from this year blew away the year before. But when it doubt, round up for awesomeness!

Overall stats as of October 1, 2007:

• 18 Different authors wrote posts
• 635 Posts made. (not quite 1 per day, but not all that far off either!)
• 2,894 Comments made.
• 350 Different nick names were used in the comments
• 70,000+ Visits in the last year.
• 52,000+ Absolute unique visitors in the last year.
• 120,000+ Pageviews in the last year.
• 2 minutes Average time on the site (stick around for a while!)
• 10,000+ Spam eaten by Akismet (since we opened comments to everyone)
  

Top Authors (give yourselves a hand!):

• Dave ‘The Game” (318 posts)
• Danny “Bartoneus” (162 posts)
• Josh “DarthCthulhu” (41 posts, welcome back!)
• Scott “DrScotto” (26 posts)
• Josh, “joshx0rfz” (24 posts)
• Denise, “Elena99” (12 posts)
• Ryon, “spankleberry” (11 posts)
• Richie “Sion“, Vince (10 posts)
• Andrew “The O” (5 posts)
• Sean “Original Sultan“, Dennis “The Main Event” (4 posts)
• Eric, “Drackmire” (3 posts)
• Toby “Cloud“, Don, Steve “Foodist“, Kory “Heathkit“, Becky “Sucilaria” (1 post each)

Top Commenters (Keep ’em coming!):

• The Game (477 comments)
• Bartoneus (459 comments)
• The Main Event (246 comments)
• joshx0rfz (220 comments)
• DrScotto (159 comments)

Top Non-Author Commenters (we do it for you guys):

• steve (104 comments)
• Reverend Mike (93 comments)
• Abe (68 comments)
• Gavin (24 comments)
• Justin (18 comments)

Most popular posts:

• Fallout 3 Q&A (all the Fallout 3 coverage was picked up on a lot of different video game sites)
• Fallout 3: An Outsider’s Inside View
• 300 Week (RED SAUCE ON PASTA!)
  
• Fallout 3 Q&A Part 2 (only split into two because our theme broke on the original post)
• They Might Be Giants: The Else Review (I’m impressed, I’m impressed)
  
• The Case for Fourth Edition
• Inq. of the Week: Ridiculous Critiques (hundreds of people calling me a moron, also, most voted on poll)
• Bonus 300 Week YouTube: 300 Rated PG (THIS IS CAKE TOWN!)
• Heroes and 24 End on Vastly Different Notes
• Can’t Wait for Spiderman 3

Most Commented Posts:

• Real Ultimate Showdown Round 1 (63 comments- probably because it was a contest!)
• Inquisition of the Week: Ridiculous Critiques (39 comments- lots of arguing, and probably people ignoring my actual article)
• Inq. of the Week: In the Movies? (28 comments)
• Real Ultimate Showdown Round 3 (28 comments, still going on!)
• Inq. of the Week: Third in a Trilogy (26 comments, arguments about gut-punches)

Most Popular Categories of the last year:

• Anime (wish we had more in it!)
• Television
• Web Meme
• Review
• Webcomic Weekend (another woefully inadequate category)

Best YouTube of the Year:

• College Saga (go see the nominees)

Categories with the Most Posts

• Video Games (193 posts)
• News (168 posts)
• Science Fiction & Fantasy (121 posts)
• Movies (121 posts)
• Comics (116 posts)

Top Search Terms of the last year (there are over 13,000 different search terms logged):

• “Critical Hits” (as it should be!)
• “Twilight Imperium Strategy” (pretty funny for a game that I described as having a broken strategy)
• “Hobbit Names”
• “They Might Be Giants The Else Review”
• “Smash Hits.com” (apparently people would rather google and click on the wrong thing than type in a URL!)

Favorite Search Terms of the last year:

• “around the survivors a perimeter create” (I don’t know why this never caught on as a Yoda catchphrase…)
• “how does a corkscrew work” (Seriously, seems like this would not be the site to go to for that)
• “gut punching” and “bleeding from the ears” (I’ve been punched in the gut and am bleeding from the ears… quick, to the internet!)
• “topless women with lightsaber” (HOT)

Top Referring Sites of the last year:

• Google (in various flavors)
• No Mutants Allowed
• 9rules (wish we were members!)
• StumbleUpon
• Boardgamegeek

Top Blog referrers of the last year:

• Dave Chalker (what a jerk)
• Amber Night
• Raph Koster
• Denise’s old blog (but go to her new one!)
• Phil the Chatty DM
  

Top Visitor Locations:

• Washington DC, USA
• Baltimore, MD, USA
• Los Angeles, CA, USA (this one’s a bit of a surprise- the first entry on the list where I don’t know anyone who lives there)
• Charlottetown, Canada
• London, England
• New York, NY, USA
• Chicago, IL, USA
• Montreal, Canada
• Toronto, Canada
• Hyattsville, MD, USA
• Miami, FL, USA

Coolest Visitor Locations:

• Perth, Australia (154 hits – the closest location to being exactly on the opposite side of the world from me)
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (136 hits)
• Buenos Aires, Argentina (122 hits, the most in South America)
• Petah Tiqwa, Israel (148 hits)
• Moscow, Russia (302 hits)

Continents completely without Critical Hits:

• Antartica

Whew, I hope all that was at least somewhat enlightening! So, as a birthday present, please tell us what your favorite posts have been, if you have favorites! And while you’re at it, take a stroll through the archives (2005, 2006, and 2007), and if you’re feeling lucky, Roll!