Top (and bottom) "Tens" of The Light Preserve

02-JAN-05

The Light Preserve has seen many visitors -- more than I expected. It's gotten far more traffic than my pages did when they were hosted at Compuserve. Part of the reason is that the web address there was enormously long (even I could never remember it). But now the Light Preserve has finished a full calendar year online with its own domain name. I was curious to see what generated the most attention from visitors, so I checked the server logs and put together the following tabulation.

A Compilation of "Hit" Rankings for 2004

Top Ten Photos	Bottom Ten Photos	Top Ten Pages
Marble Canyon	The Complainer	About Powell
Black Canyon Skylight	Iris on Black	Central California Gallery
Through Sands of Time	Sarah in White	Death Valley Gallery
Her Graceful Light	Eyes of a 4H Girl	Various Gallery
Desert Wallflower	His Five String Voice	Musicians Gallery
Backbone of Time	Her Sepia Tones	More People Gallery
Flying Fortress	Alone	Web Services
General Sherman Tree	Mountain Goats	Image Services
Badwater	Mr. Timm Walker	About the Light Preserve
Pier	Cathedral Rock	Cycling Gallery

The Top Tens are ranked from top to bottom in order of the most selected items. The Bottom Ten image list is ranked with the least selected image at the bottom of the list. There are a few surprises, and a few expected candidates on these lists. However, the lists are not absolute measures of image and page popularity, since there are many factors that influence selections by visitors. I have deliberately not linked items on these lists since that would further skew the results of 2005. Yeah, yeah, I know: the listing will affect traffic, even without links. I'm doing it this way. Thbthbthb.

I'm not surprised to see the first four of the Top Ten Photos, but I didn't expect to see Desert Wallflower there. Sure, it's a nice image, but I didn't think the thumbnail link would generate that much interest. Fying Fortress was not online for the full year, and I'm pleased to see that many visitors to The Light Preserve are attracted to its dynamic graphics -- it's definitely not a "warm and fuzzy" image and I suspect that most people either like it a lot or hate it. General Sherman Tree got some help from a search engine that indexed it with a direct link. A few photos are linked from more than one page of The Preserve, so they clearly have an edge there; you won't select links that you don't see. Image selection, and thus these rankings, is also affected by my comments associated with the photos.

Of the Bottom Ten Photos, seven of them were not online for the full year. I thought that Cathedral Rock would generate more interest, but the others on the list didn't surprise me so much. Iris on Black proved very popular for December 2004, so I don't expect it to be on the Bottom list of 2005.

The Gallery pages clearly generate the most overall interest here. I didn't expect About Powell to lead the chart (maybe my mother has a bot that links to it every time she's on the 'net). Well, anyway, thanks to everyone for the interest, and please feel free to continue e-mailing your comments, criticisms, jokes and inquiries to me at eep@LightPreserve.com. The Light Preserve Magazine is not on the Top Ten Page list. It's only been online since October, and its traffic for December suggests that it will easily displace the Cycling Gallery for 2005, and likely rank much higher. If so, I may consider ranking the articles instead of just the magazine top page, but currently there aren't enough articles to justify a further breakdown of magazine traffic.

I'm looking forward to another year of photography, web authoring and image services. I hope you'll continue visiting the site and sharing your thoughts. Ain't the 'net grand? You betcha.