Most popular pages on QuirksMode.org
Recently Google released the very handy Webmaster Tools app, with which you can see how many links to pages there are, plus quite a few other goodies. This allowed me to create a Top Ten list of the most popular pages on this site, as measured by incoming links.
- Homepage: 23,913 links
An unsurprising first place.
- CSS contents page: 5007 links
This second place surprised me a bit, especially since my JavaScript content page is not in the Top Ten at all. I've always seen QuirksMode.org as a JavaScript site primarily, with CSS a distinct afterthought. It seems my readers disagree.
- QuirksBlog index: 3565 links
A surprise, too. Sure, I expected some links to QuirksBlog, but also expected most of them to point to specific stories.
- Conditional comments: 2398 links
The fourth place of this page doesn't surprise me in the sense that I already knew it was popular. When querying Google for conditional comments this page comes up second or third, directly after Microsoft's official explanation.
Nonetheless I don't really see why this is the fourth most popular page on my site; there must be many more explanations of conditional comments all over the Web. Apparently people think I'm doing a good job of explaining them.
- Multiple Explorers: 2161 links
Same remarks as the previous. Apparently this page is filling a void.
- Tableless forms: 1748 links
Again a surprise. I created this page back in 2003 and quickly lost interest. There must be many better other examples of the same effect.
- Styling an input type="file": 1708 links
This page was quite popular just after I released it, and apparently this popularity is lasting.
- The AJAX response: XML, HTML, or JSON?: 1455 links
The single QuirksBlog entry in the Top Ten. It generated quite a bit of discussion back in December 2005, and apparently that has had a lasting effect.
- Quirks Mode and Strict Mode: 1240 links
The popularity of this page is probably due to this site's name; when searching for "Quirks Mode" a page on "QuirksMode" obviously has a high ranking.
- Clearing floats: 1007 links
Again a surprise. This is just an overview page.
In conclusion, it seems that most readers of QuirksMode.org like those pages best that clarify a simple concept, like conditional comments or tableless forms, even though I myself consider these pages secondary. The most striking feature of the Top Ten is that many pages I consider important aren't even mentioned, such as the W3C DOM Compatibility Tables, the JavaScript Table of Contents, my nifty DOM scripts or intriguing QuirksBlog entries.
So be it. My readers have spoken.
Comments are closed.
1 Posted by Grey on 12 February 2007 | Permalink
I think the DOM Compatibility tables are very, very important. If you run into problems browser-wise (or are just new to the concept), they are the best resource you can find.
The only "problem" I see with them is that they represent your own opinion of what browsers should be able to do and not W3C's (for the objects/properties/methods concerned). Therefore one has to make up his mind himself (i.e. one has to know which behaviour is "correct" and which of all those one thinks is the right way).
I think you're often right with your rating, but still.
Don't know what went wrong with the quirksblog entries, though. All link to individual articles should add up to more than the other stuff !?
I still think the CSS articles are important, though (sorry) ;)
My question is: Does this entry mean you will change things according to this new "truth" or did you just want to get rid of some frustration (or both)?
2 Posted by Tanny O'Haley on 14 February 2007 | Permalink
I have been using Quirksmode.org for several years now. I find that your javascript information very helpful. Please keep writing what is of interest to you.
3 Posted by Jasja on 14 February 2007 | Permalink
Interesting to see these results.
I think the issue here is the interest of the general public. A much bigger group (not just the regular quirksmode.org readers) are interested in Css related articles, and I think this explains the backlink popularity.
4 Posted by ppk on 16 February 2007 | Permalink
I'm not going to change my writing in any way; I've always written about stuff because it interests me, not because there's a huge demand for it.
I was just intrigued by the gap between my perception and the average of my readers' perceptions. And no, I'm not frustrated in any way; even the pages that don't figure in the Top Ten are still well visited.
5 Posted by Ralph on 17 February 2007 | Permalink
I agree, I'm surprised myself. I didn't even knew most of the pages listed there (and I've also be reading QirksMode for a couple of years now) --although, I didn't knew you had a blog until a couple of months ago, so where does that leave me? :)
What I find more useful are the compatibility tables, I always go back to them when I need to decide on how to solve a new problem, or even once that I solved it, then I see you did it in a different way and I have to double-check what I've done (I usually find out it also works, fortunately).
I guess everything is due to the way search engines work. People take you seriously, hence a lot of links come to this site, the engines give a high rank and index all the contents, so when looking for "Javascript whatever" your site is often (or always?) in the first page of results. Ever since I noticed this, when looking for something I directly write "site:quirksmode.org whatever" :)
By the way, if you actually look for the text above, your site is on the second page (on a 10 results-per-page base)