2011 Year In Review, Site Edition

The 2011 look to the site has since been tweaked with larger fonts to keep up with the increase in tablet and smart phone usage. I know this bit of information has made your year. (Click to enlarge)Traditionally, the annual State of GeoffShackelford.com involves sharing completely (almost) useless statistics and I will get to those momentarily.

As you may recall, this is the first year of the website including the GolfDigest.com presence, and I'd like to think in spite of suggestions that I would lose my way when selling out to The Man, the general flavor of the blog continued and thrived thanks to Golf Digest's support.

With the increased traffic (over 6 million page views and the first 1.5 million unique-visit year since the blog started in '03), came more commenters, more lunatics, lots more spam and some attempted hackings (one weirdly successful). But I'd like to think there was also a steadier diet of postings and varied content. While the site may link more often to AP stories posted on GolfDigest.com as opposed to say, the Seattle Times, I believe the site has remained consistent in linking to the best writing and most entertaining content I can find.

Which makes this a swell time to just offer a brief summary/reminder for new readers about what I've been trying to do at GeoffShackelford.com for nearly eight years now.

--This is primarily my clipping archive. The site started as an offshoot of The Future of Golf, where I would document stories and monitor trends related to the theme of the book (the game was going to hell for those of you who have not plunked down the $21.95). This continues to be the driving theme behind what is aggregated.

--Nearly all posts start from the perspective of documenting stories that might be worth looking back at a few months later as trends unfold. Others are just posted to lighten things up or to track the development of an elite player's march toward history (or not).

--Commenters, armed with a mouse featuring a scroll option and who complain about what content I chose to post, will continue to not be appreciated, as will posts using one of the seven dirty words you used to not be able to say on TV but which do not do justice to the quality of the readership here.

--The site look has been updated in the last few weeks to appeal even more to mobile phone and tablets, with slightly larger fonts friendlier to the increasingly popular small devices. Embedded links continue to be defined by underlined bold text in a nod to our color-blind readers, while the width of the content has expanded to accommodate YouTube videos.

--For 2012, no changes are planned in content, attitude or style. GolfDigest.com will continue to partner with the site and there will be some new ways to grow and improve. I hope to get to as many major events as possible since traffic spikes when I'm blogging from on-site, indicating that you enjoy coverage from the tournaments.

--I hope to continue to do more videos, more architecture coverage (a request last year) and perhaps podcasting in 2012, all to be posted for just 24 hours to ensure the financial stability and viability of the PGA Tour's conglomerate partners. And of course, I would always would love to hear what you have to say about content and site function. 

And now, on to the all important and (almost) totally meaningless stats courtesy of Google Analytics, which took the first three months of the year off for reasons unknown. Thankfully, my host Squarespace, which I continue to highly recommend, has wonderful stats to fill in some of the blanks.

GeoffShackelford.com readers...

Average 1.83 Pages/Visit
00:02:30 Avg. Time on Site
69.39% Bounce Rate
24.28% % New Visits

You are using these operating systems, and do note the increase in smart iphone and Android usage, which was almost non-existent in prior years...

MacOSX 33.91%
WinXP1 25.98%
Win7  16.84%
WinVista 8.53%
iPhone4 7.63%
Unknown 2.85%
Android  2.21%
Linux 0.95%
Win2000 0.33%

As for web browsers...

Safari 31%
Gecko(Firefox) 23.74%
IE8  14.37%
Chrome  11.97%
IE7 6.02%
KHTML  5.18%
Unknown  2.44%
IE9 2.18%
IE6 2.04%
Opera  0.36%

The top referrers, and do note #6, an ipad app...

1.golfdigest.com
2.twitter.com
3.t.co
4.google.com
5.sports.yahoo.com
6.pulsenews
7.golfclubatlas.com
8.weiunderpar.com
9.golf.com
10.facebook.com

Top Countries for readership and not surprisingly, China failed to make the list despite lifting the ban on my site in most regions this year...thank you my dictatorial friends!

1.United States
2.Canada
3.United Kingdom
4.Australia
5.Ireland
6.Germany
7.Netherlands
8.Sweden
9.New Zealand
10.Singapore

Top American states...

1.California
2.New York
3.Florida
4.Texas
5.Illinois
6.Georgia
7.North Carolina
8.Pennsylvania
9.New Jersey
10.Massachusetts

And within some of those states, starting with California, the top cities were...

1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco
3. San Diego
4. San Jose
5. Irvine
6. Sacramento
7. San Mateo
8. Fresno
9. Carlsbad
10.Santa Monica

Florida...

1.Ponte Vedra Beach
2.Orlando
3.Jacksonville
4.Tampa
5.Miami
6.Winter Park
7.Ft Myers
8.North Palm Beach
9.Windermere
10.Fernandina Beach

And in the great state of Chris Christie and for the third year running...

1.Far Hills
2.Jersey City
3.Liberty Corner
4.Morristown
5.Madison
6.Bridgewater
7.Hillsborough
8.Bernardsville
9.Princeton
10.Trenton