no longer famous

Two years ago, I was wondering why views of my blog had shot up by an order of magnitude in December (2020) and stayed high in the new year. They stayed consistently at the new high level for two years. Typically, a new entry had a good chance of making 1000 views within three months after posting. I never found an explanation for this sudden rise to (very moderate) fame.

In the week beginning 26.12.2022, the views appear to have crashed back down to the kind of level that was normal before December 2020. So I'm left wondering where my ephemeral fame went ...

This is how views per time went up (in the all time view) - the crash at the end isn't representative in this view, as the last data point is the incomplete month of January:

And this is how they came down, showing the last three months only. There was a spike before xmas which compensates the drop after xmas, so the drop doesn't show in the monthly figure for December in the first graph above.

I'm wondering if it's some sort of dark magic perpetrated by Google, making my blog more or less visible. The crash could also be linked to the current crisis at twitter (with the spike before xmas correlating to the high activity of twitter refugees on mastodon). But at the end of the day I'm still puzzled, so all hints appreciated (although I do realise that not very many people are going to see this entry).

Update 23.2.2023: It is now becoming clear that the curve has returned to its previous trajectory, a slow linear increase which I suspect is proportional to the number of blogposts that are out there for people to find. Compared to that line, currently at around 5,000 views per month, the exceptionally high stats of Dec 2020 to Dec 2022 were around threefold higher. The more dramatic effect is on the new posts - they achieved ten times better results during the special period, and dropped back to double figures after December 26. So whatever mechanism boosted my new posts in 2021/22 has now stopped working.

almost famous

I've seen a surprising increase in views of blog entries here. Between mid November and early December, views of similar entries (eg CB features, always blogged to the same protocol and promoted the same way) have gone up by a factor of 5-10, and stayed high since. Until November they were on a gradual decline curve, sliding to fewer than 100 in some cases.

I've selected one type of entry for clarity, but it's the same phenomenon for other types as well (eg family history), which is what makes me suspicious. It can't be that all these very different topics are suddenly finding a lot more interest. It could be something like improved visibility in searches. Or at worst, some kind of accounting glitch or increased activity by bots? If anybody has any idea what may have happened (or developed a surprising addiction to this blog since November), I'd be grateful for hints.

The one thing I did change around that time was giving up on the regular (up to four times a week) science news entries, which had also slipped in viewing stats since I introduced them a couple of years earlier. I absolutely don't see, however, how these would have scared away 80-90% of my audience.

Screenshot from today - you can read the actual numbers when you click on the pic.

PS (29.4.) I have now updated the profile info with a new photo (the other one was around 10 years old) showing lockdown locks and grey moustache. Might keep the views in check.

prize coverage

I was recently awarded the GDCh Preis für Journalisten und Schriftsteller, that's the prize for journalists and authors from the German Chemical Society. This kind of thing is new to me, so I have no idea when where and how I should brag about it, but I'm guessing it might be useful to have an archive for the relevant press coverage, so here goes:

Chemistry Views magazine (10.3.2014)

Angewandte Chemie 2014, 126, 2570 (restricted access)

Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 2536 (restricted access)

And I would never have found those three references if it hadn't been for the attention of chemists at my alma mater, the Phillipps Universität Marburg, who included them in their history brochure on page 21.

Articles connected to / motivated by the award:

Mein Weg zum Wissenschaftsjournalismus
Chemie in unserer Zeit 2014,48, 68-71 DOI: 10.1002/ciuz.201400659 [FREE access]

Es fehlt der wissenschaftliche Tiefgang
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2014, 62, 750-752
An interview which the editors of Nachrichten conducted with me on the day after the award ceremony, referring back to some of the problems I addressed in my lecture.

photo of the event from the GDCh facebook page