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Sunday 20 January 2019

Most Popular 'mitchmen' Posts of All Time up to 2018

M Carcel - Runaway
In this third and final part of my annual review of post popularity I present the all-time, all-comers, most popular posts and as you might guess from the picture above and past history, it's still Mike Carcel in the number one position. But only just! Priapus of Milet is just behind and poised to dethrone the King next time.

According to my Blogger 'hit stats', out of all the mitchmen articles published to date, those registering the most hits since publication were as shown below.


Table 3 – mitchmen Articles With Most Hits Since Publication to end 2018

Posn
(last yr)
Title of Post
(& link)
Year of
Pub'n
Total
Hits
1 (1)
2010
24020
2 (2)
2012
23787
3 (6)
2008
16830
4 (3)
2010
14385
5 (4)
2009
13786
6 (5)
2009
11600
7 (7)
2010
9500
8 (10)
2012
7430
9 (9)
2009
7284
10= (8)
2012
6878
10= (20)
2009
6878
12 (11)
2010
6442
13 (13)
2011
6145
14 (11)
2009
6098
15 (12)
2010
6090
16 (15)
2012
6047
17 (-)
2015
5946
18 (-)
2017
5817
19 (17)
2010
5813
20 (16)
2010
5730


The all time top 20 saw a close finish in 2018 with my Mike Carcel A-Z article only just keeping it's top spot. Priapus of Milet-1 in second place closed the gap from 3061 to a mere 233 during 2018, so we may have a new leader next year. Late-starter, A-Z article on Cavelo did even better hits-wise and jumped 3 places, better than I predicted last year - but he's still a distant 3rd

I down-graded this chart last year because it had become rather static, but there have been some interesting developments this year and the overall increase in blog traffic in recent years has made those top totals seem less formidable targets for new challengers.

Further down the list, the honours go to A-Z of Fetish Artists – The Hun which rose 10 places to grab a toehold in the top 10. It almost, but not quite, pushed out 'My Initiation' which slid to equal 10th. A-Z of Fetish Artists – Platter had a another good year rising 2 places to 8th spot despite scoring fewer hits than the previous year. Several other artists in the top 10 also saw their hit counts slide during 2018.

There's usually a bit of jockeying for position in the 10-20 places but the established order was upset by two, new arrivals:- my own A Christmas Criminal by Mitchell (1-5) at 17 which obviously delights me and The Milking Factory at 18 which astonishingly has made this top 20 list in less than 2 years. These two articles are the only ones dated later than 2012. If they carry on scoring at this year's rate during 2019 they will soon be in top 10 territory. However, it's a sobering thought that even Milking Factory's score in 2018 alone was less than the hit counts of the top two articles. The arrival of these newcomers displaced A-Z of Fetish Artists – Matt and A-Z of Fetish Artists – Manflesh from the top 20.


For comparison, my 'Index of Artists' page reached 26856 hits during the year (up from 16040) which would have earned top spot in this ranking if I counted it as a post. It shows the tremendous interest in artists who work in our field.


Missing years just outside the list

Average hit rates

The total cumulative hits method of assessing popularity is obviously biased towards older articles so it's interesting to compare average hits per year since publication - see table below. In this list, multi-part articles are represented by the highest scoring individual post and I have left out 2018 posts which don't even have a full year yet and are covered by a separate table.
(If I had included them they would have bagged 5 of the top 10 spots!)

Article
Published
Hits per year
Position
(& last year)
'Total Hits' position
2012
3547
1 (1)
2
2017
3118
2 (-)
18
2010
2824
3 (2)
1
2008
1978
4 (9)
3
2015
1966
5 (3)
17
2017
1899
6 (-)
-
2017
1735
7 (-)
-
2010
1691
8 (4)
4
2009
1621
9 (6)
5
2009
1364
10 (7)
6


As you can see, the usual suspects still bag most of the top spots suggesting they won't be shifted easily by newcomers. Every article in the top 10 improved it's score in 2018, indicating sustained interest even in the oldies. Notice that there's a striking gap in scores between place No 3 and No 4.

This method tends to benefit popular, newer articles and there are some interesting beneficiaries this year. 'Milking Factory' has dramatically impacted all my charts this year as has Mitch Colby, Part 5 to a lesser extent. The third 'newbie' here, Chirenon's brilliant 'A New Life For Our Air Force Boys' hasn't cropped up in any of these numbers before however. That's because it was originally published too late in the year (27th Oct) to register in the 2017 'new articles' table. For that reason I didn't record a score for that year end which in turn means I haven't calculated a figure for 2018 hits either. However it's score in 2017 must have been less than the top 20 cut-off figure of 359. Since it's total now is 2044 so it must have registered at least 1686 hits in 2018 which would have put it 13th position in the all-comers chart for that year and possibly 12th. Perhaps I had better go back and adjust that article!

The new article effect is often fleeting and my own story of 'A Christmas Criminal' did well to hang on to No 5 in 2018, but 'Woodunart' from 2016 was pushed out of the top 10, along with Tagame (Part 1)

The oldest A-Z entries, notably letters A-G, were quite sketchy and originally had censored images. My plans to revise more of these articles are progressing slowly. I think the scores for these articles also suffered from the blog suspension in July 2010 which seemed to have wiped out the historical statistics and I can't fix that.

The articles I post to this blog are very much based on my own interests and fancies but the results of this survey do help me plan future offerings. My readers preferences doesn't always match my own (where are Kalabro, Les, JoeT and Link?). Nevertheless it's gratifying to see such interest in the great artists who often have a fairly low visibility on the web.

Remember, this comparison is only made for entertainment, since I don't really know how accurate Google's stats are, I suspect they don't even count people who just browse through the blog roll.

Thanks to all of you for your continuing interest and support.

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