London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Celebs, Pit bulls and hairdos

pitbullAs is customary at this time of year, I’ve been looking at the readership statistics. And, in general, the results are remarkably similar to last year. Yes, it’s the same old celebrities which generate the traffic. For those who know what they’re looking for it’s Super Junior which is the sure winner, while for those who come across the site as a result of a search engine, most people are interested in the magic straight perm. Once again the comely Lee Sabi (below left) is the top individual celeb which people are googling when they come here. Jeon Ji-hyun and BoA continue to be popular, but Rain seems to be on the decline.

Lee SabiIn looking at some of the individual articles which people look at most frequently, most of them are understandable. If I were lazy and did nothing apart from post loads of pictures of celebs I could boost my traffic tenfold. But that wouldn’t be very interesting for me. What’s more interesting is the puzzle of why so many people are interested in my notice of a gallery talk at the KCC. The only explanation is the image of a pit bull included with the article (above right) – which itself is also a popular search term.

Lee Da-haeThe total readership statistics have plateaued now, which is fine.

I had some minor dips when I changed the design of the site to improve my ability to drill down into what people are actually reading, and there was also a dip for a few weeks when a duff plugin made it look to unregistered readers as if I’d stopped updating the site. Otherwise I’m trucking along at anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 visitors a day (depending on which statistics you believe); 6,000 to 14,000 daily page views, and, in case you’re interested in the most widely misused statistic around, 40,000 to 50,000 hits per day.

What’s different in 2008? Apart from the pit bull, the new content to have proved popular was a little article on Lee Da Hae (above right); Ash’s football articles – particularly his one on the greatest moments in Korean football history – and, the most popular article from 2008, a rather slapdash report on the opening night of London Korean Film Festival. When a few Japanese Lee Byung-hun fansites discovered a new picture of Lee my server fairly hummed with activity. What is disappointing is that the much more interesting article about Lee which appeared a couple of days later (and which had some better pictures) completely passed these people by.

Depressingly, it is usually the articles which take the most effort and which are the most rewarding to write that generate the least interest from the punters. But at least it’s comforting that some of LKL’s unique content does get attention. Anna’s interviews with indie musicians (such as Yeongene – left) got over 10,600 readings last year, while Aashish’s sporting coverage was not far behind with 8,600. Apologies to other contributors for not having their statistics – once I learn how to do SQL queries I’ll be able to slice and dice this data any which way.

Best wishes for the year of the Ox.

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