This blog and website is just short of five years old. It started in January 2012 to a grand total of 100 readers that month. I have no clue who those 100 readers were or how they found this website, but I wonder if any of those 100 are still reading this blog. And a tradition I started in 2012 (which is nearly the Jurassic age in internet terms) we the annual review of my top posts for the year – and it is time for the 2016 review.
And like any 2016 review, it’s time to list out the top 13 most read articles for 2016 on this website. Each article was viewed over 100,000 times, an amazing number if you follow how well blogs do on the internet. In fact, the top 13 made up over 50% of the article views for the year.
One huge caveat – I’ve published over 180 articles on this website this year. But some of the top 13 are articles published in 2014 and 2015. It makes me happy (and you always want to keep carnivorous dinosaurs happy) to realize that older articles are being read in huge numbers even 2 years later. Many of these articles are at the top or nearly at the top of Google search rankings. Just Google “banana cancer” – my article is at #1. And it is shared all the time by people who read the nonsense that ripe bananas cure cancer.
Please take a moment and read some of the top 13. Please share the article when you’ve read it – it helps bring in new readers and improves the Google ranking.
What’s up for 2017
I’ve been asked to participate in a very exciting project with regards to science myths. Right now, it’s at a preliminary stage, but even that is taking up a boatload of time. If it is a go, I will be focused on that project for six months or so, but we will continue to have new and important content. Professor Reiss contributes regularly and frequently with important discussions of legal issues with respect to vaccines.
Based on feedback from many of you, we’re trying to reduce the amount of ads, which is clobbering revenue for this website. If you use an ad blocker, please contribute (use the links below) to help out. I know ads are annoying, so if you hate them, please contribute.
If you want more great content (and no matter what I’m doing, I’ll keep providing content that I hope is great), please contribute.
I’ve already removed some of the annoying ads on here, and hopefully I can get it down to a handful.
We’re still working on the website design. Consider this a working beta. It’s a bit slow, depending on the time of day and your browser, but my guy is trying to optimize things. It’s faster than it was 2 weeks ago. Your help through contributions have made all of this possible. Compared to what I had in January 2012, this is amazing.
Some 2016 review trivia
- This website has had readers from every country in the world but three – Chad, Central African Republican and South Sudan.
- Yes, that means there’s been readers from Iran, Cuba, and, believe it or not, North Korea. If you know anything about North Korea’s internet policy, there’s only a handful of people who can access websites outside of the country.
- The number 1 website that I cite is PubMed. Why? Because everything I write is based on evidence, and the best evidence are peer-reviewed articles, which are indexed on PubMed.
- The number 1 search term that leads to this website? Marijuana. I was actually surprised.
- Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes. Yeah that still tastes like a crap sandwich.
Final thoughts
I want to thank everyone for their support of this website. And wish everyone a Happy Holidays, whatever your beliefs and traditions.
Please share and please contribute.
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