I published a “half-year review” article on July 1, 2022, covering the most-visited articles of the first half of 2022. Today, I will do the same for 2023. Consider the half-year review a preview for comprehnsive our year-end review article next January (see 2020, 2021, and 2022 year-end reviews).
2023 has seen many new articles at The New Leaf Journal, including on previously little-touched subjects. (See January 23, February 23, March 23, April 23, May 23, and June 23 recaps.) Moreover, I added new article types for short posts focusing on links (Leaf Buds) and syndicated newsletters.
However, we have had some unfortunate events in 2023. Namely, Bing blocked our site from appearing in its search index in January, which had the effect of removing us from all Bing-dependent search (most significantly DuckDuckGo). This situation still persists as of July 1, 2023.
The Bing ban has significantly affected our visitor totals, even though we have seen improved performance with Google, Brave Search, and Yandex in 2023 (our 2023 performance is significantly better than 2021 but behind 2022).
Below, you will find a list of our 24-most visited articles of 2023 according to our 100% local and privacy-friendly analytics solution, Koko Analytics (see my Koko Analytics review). Note that Koko Analytics respects do not track sections and requires that users allow first party JavaScript, and does not catch RSS visits (see our Feeds directory). Thus, while it provides a good idea of which articles visitors hit, it is not as comprehensive as more robust or invasive analytics solutions and the actual order of most-visited articles may be slightly different than our Koko Analytics stats.
(Note: N/A is used when an article was not yet published in the month in question. X indicates that the article was outside the top-24 most visited posts in a particular month according to Koko Analytics. Top-six month ranks are indicated in bold.)
2023 has seen the gradual decline of some of our heavy-hitters from 2021 and 2022. In some cases such as my 2020 Pixelfed review and my 2021 review of the Teracube 2e phone, the decline is natural and expected. In other cases, it does seem possible that certain articles are affected more by the Bing ban than others. I have been under the impression, for example, that my tsuki ga kirei study (2nd) and Constantine XI post (9th) are two examples of posts that have been strongly negatively affected by the Bing situation.
Assuming no dramatic events such as Hacker News page 1 appearances (we have no notable Hacker News spikes in 2023 after having had five in 2022), I expect to begin to see some of the articles in the latter half of our half-way top-24 pushed out in favor of 2023 articles and some 2022 posts that have shown strong performance in May and June. Another article to watch is our most consistent all-time article, my tsuki ga kirei review. It will almost certainly take over the number one spot in the ranking either in late June or early July. It was denied year-end top ranks by Hacker News shares in 2021 and 2022, but this could be its year of all stays calm on the external sharing front.
Finally, let us review our half-year newsletter-rank statistics. I mail our newsletters on Saturdays. In each newsletter, I include our five-most visited articles from the previous seven days (Saturday to Friday). Below, I rank all of our articles by newsletter top five appearances. Note that this list covers the first 26 newsletter weeks, ending with the week of June 24 to July 1. Only the tsuki ga kirei in first place has made every top five. You can see all of our newsletters in our syndicated newsletter section and learn how to follow the newsletter here.
1. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (26 appearances, 9 top ranks)
2. Tiki paralogue trick in Fire Emblem Engage (20 appearances, 11 top ranks)
3. Peekier Search Engine Review (19 appearances, 3 top ranks)
4. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis (18 appearances)
5. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) (11 appearances, 1 top rank)
T6. Biden, Lincoln, and Counting Back From the President’s Birth (5 appearances, 1 top rank); Heights in “The Dangers in My Heart” Anime (5 appearances)
8. Tom Cantor’s Changed Has Poor Color Scheme (4 appearances)
T9. The Last Stand of Constantine XI (3 appearances, 1 top rank); How the Forget-Me-Not Flower Found Its Name (3 appearances)
T11. Understanding Hair Color in the Kimi ni Todoke Anime Series (2 appearances); The Nice Boat 〜 A Look Back at the School Days Anime (2 appearances)
13. [One appearance] Saving Internet Archive URLs in Wallabag; The Story of Billy Possum, President Hoover’s Pet Opossum; How to Find Substack RSS Feeds and Other Notes; Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021); Nintendo Power’s 1999 Yoshi in Pokémon April Fools Prank; Review of /e/ – An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones; Familiar Song in Angel Next Door Anime; Bird in Review 〜 Resplendent Trogon; The story of our Bing blacklisting; Height differences in anime romances; The Enigmatic Life and Death of Emperor Otho
The top of our weekly ranking list reflects our top-five articles of 2023 thus far. We have seen more variety in the 2023 top fives thus far, including six articles which made weekly top five appearances without featuring in our half-year top 24 (a couple of those articles will likely move into the list in the latter half of 2023).