Thursday, March 21, 2013

Blogger Most Popular Post Gadget Mystery

When I updated my blog colors for spring, I decided to try out the popular post gadget offered by Blogger (located on the left sidebar) just to see if it shows the same ones that I do based on number of comments received (located on the right sidebar).  It does not.  So, that begs the question:  How does Blogger determine the most popular posts?  My next theory was to see if it is based on page views.

But alas, it's apparently not based on page views either because the post it showed with the lowest number of pageviews was "September is for Taking New Classes" which had 324 views.  However, 20 other posts that had more than this!

My all-time most popular post list based on number of pageviews would actually be this:

What's Your Old West Cowboy Name? (1,582)
We Entered the Cato-o-lympics (870)
Craft Time--Making a Baby Blanket Without Sewing (735)
A Sample Taste Makes Sale at GNC (655)
The Fat Stutter (647)
Canine Good Citizen--Congrats Abby!  (594)
Decorative Wooden Match Stick Crosses (544)
Salvaging the Computer Keyboard (524)
A Letter to Mom (524)
Shopping at Three Amish Stores (517)
(If you would like to read any of these, just use the search box above.)

I could just post this list with links like I did for my list based on most comments, but I really like how the gadget shows a thumbnail and a snippet from the post.  It has three options:  all-time, the last 30 days, the last 7 days so I thought perhaps, the all-time was just too big a range to handle properly.  Therefore, I tried again, choosing the 30-day time frame.  This didn't work either even choosing to list just five instead of ten.  It showed posts that were much older than 30 days so finally I chose the last option of just 7 days.  Guess what, it showed two from the last seven days but still included one from a long time ago.   I give up!  It would be a great gadget if it worked right!

So, any ideas on how this gadget determines the most popular posts?  I would really like to know!


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2 comments:

~Lavender Dreamer~ said...

I don't know how it works but this is all very interesting! I would like to see my most popular posts, too!

Karen, author of "My Funny Dad, Harry" said...

Lavender Dreamer: It's easy enough to find out, just go into your post list in Blogger and scroll down looking at the number of page views or comments--however you choose to determine your popular posts.

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