Of 2016: The GameLuv Report
GameLuv’s stats were a real surprise in 2016! I only managed to make 72 posts, an all time low, but we almost had a 4-year high with 10,149 views. Once again, lots of views (1,834) were to the homepage which makes me happy to think that at least a few hundred of you come directly to GameLuv.com. For that I apologize, I really should have more posts going up throughout the year. Between OSV and Delisted Games the site is suffering from some neglect.
Beyond the homepage our top views were again from years past but this time most were just from 2015. The KPop Dance Festival news saw another 1,625 views in 2016, the most for a single post on the site. As Submerged went on sale and was ported to iOS more people came looking for meaning behind the game’s made-up language. That brought another 830 views to my post Decoding the Language and Story of Submerged. I’m happy to see more posts from 2016 pop up in the top ten as well.
When Miyamoto appeared on The Tonight Show the internet had a bit of a freak-out over his shirt featuring Mario dressed up as a samurai. It immediately reminded me of the last Club Nintendo calendar that features Mario and friends dressed up for various Japanese holidays. I scanned the calendar and it brought in 253 views just in the last few weeks of 2016. My post recounting some new tidbits on Metal Gear Survive garnered 224 views and my March Update on Spelunker World grabbed another 104 views.
In search we had the same results as usual. Of our 4,329 search referrals, 3,898 were from Google. The next highest referrer was Reddit where I’d shared some posts about the Nintendo Switch, Spelunker World and Earth Defense Force. The search terms that brought people to the site couldn’t have been much more varied from last year, though.
While “luv game” and “just dance kpop” prevailed we had more people come our way thanks to Spelunker World and Metal Gear Survive than anything else. I’m also especially proud that someone’s search for “goat farting in zoo” landed them on this post, even though it wasn’t what they were looking for. Finally, I’m not sure what “kyar game” is but I don’t think it was someone looking for an early augmented reality experience at Disney World, which is what I posted about in 2007.
Globally, we had the same kind of split as usual. 5,467 visitors from North America, 458 from Canada, 433 from the UK and a few hundred each from the remaining European countries. Pretty much all of the numbers were increases as well, although that includes the Eastern European ones where the spammers and scammers come from.
It was a surprisingly good year for the site and I think the only thing I can honestly attribute it to is something changing with Google’s algorithm. I did add an SEO plugin to the site but I’ve only made the metadata changes on the most recent posts. Unless it’s doing some real magic I think it’s really to do with search rank and all that Google stuff. I’m no SEO expert, not even a novice really, so I’m happy enough to see the numbers go up on the graphs.
Looking ahead, I’ll probably end up doing the Top Twenty of the IGF again, although I may take more time with it this year instead of rushing to put a bow on it. I hope to do some more cross-posting from my YouTube channel to the site and at least do a recap of my work on OSV. And of course, I’ll be throwing all kinds of random thoughts, pick-ups and links as they pop up. I’ll be updating the Play-Asia sidebar for a new look in 2017 instead of cluttering up the joint with their random product images. I’ve also begun doing some A/B testing with the few ad banners on the site so you may not see the same 3 ads for mobile games that I feel have been running forever. Also, I might as well ask if you’d turn off your ad blocker for us? It really does help and I promise I don’t have any pop-ups or pop-overs waiting to annoy you.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks goes to everyone who stopped by GameLuv in 2016. I hope you found something entertaining, informative or completely new! Cheers to the best in 2017!
