Happy 2013 – A Look Back At Randomly London In 2012

New Years 2013 London Eye Fireworks
New Years Eve 2013 Fireworks from @MPSintheskyOriginal Source.

Well the past year has been nothing short of amazing for Randomly London. Although I registered the domain name back in December 2011, I didn’t get around to writing my first post until March 24, 2012.

In that very short period of time, I’ve played around with a few different content ideas and London related topics. The overall response has been great, especially for my Tube challenge related posts.

Here are just a few numbers that sum up 2012:

Number of posts: 155
Unique Visitors: 7,592
Unique Pageviews: 11,392

Top 10 Posts By Unique Pageviews:

  1. Victoria Line Underground Stations – Facts, Trivia And Impressions2,032 pageviews
  2. Why Are London’s Property And Rental Prices So High? Hint: It’s Not Greed1,129 pageviews
  3. Victoria Line Walk – From Walthamstow Central to Brixton1,024 pageviews
  4. Bakerloo Line Underground Stations – Facts, Trivia And Impressions914 pageviews
  5. Randomly London v. The Tube – My Personal London Underground Challenge718 pageviews
  6. The Various Faces Of The King’s Cross Canopy Before Demolition565 pageviews
  7. Is There Any Doubt We Are In Drought224 pageviews
  8. Tube Challenge Status221 pageviews
  9. Waterloo & City Line – Walk And Tube Station Visits192 pageviews
  10. What A Difference 5 Years Makes – City of London 2007 vs 2012128 pageviews

Top 5 Sources Of Traffic

  1. Reddit – 4,426 visits – By far my biggest source of traffic. A huge thank you to everyone who’s upvoted and commented on my various posts.
  2. Google Search – 937 visits – I’m deliberately not trying to target search traffic, so it’s interesting to see it being my number 2 traffic source.
  3. Stumbleupon – 622 visits – Lots of visitors, most of whom don’t stay very long.
  4. Twitter – 420 visits – A huge thank you to everyone who follows, and retweets my posts on Twitter. You can follow me @RandomlyLondon
  5. Facebook – 311 visits – Also thanks to everyone who’s liked my Facebook page.

So overall a fantastic 2012 and here’s hoping 2013 will be even better. You can expect a whole bunch more tube related posts as I continue my tube challenge along with some other surprises too.

Special Jubilee 2012 Photos – A Look Back At Past Jubilees

We’re now just one full work week away from the Diamond Jubilee celebrations that will be held from June 2-5, 2012. To get in the spirit of the celebrations, I’ve decided to have a look back at previous Jubilees. This will be only the second time the UK has celebrated a Diamond Jubilee (the first was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897). So it’s not exactly a common phenomenon.

With the help of Art.co.uk, I’ve managed to find a variety photos from Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, along with photos of King George V’s and Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilees (1935 and 1977 respectively).

I hope you enjoy them and you can find all of them by using the jubilee tag.

100 Days Until The Olympics – A Look At London 2012 By The Numbers

With 100 days to go, it’s no secret that opinions about the Olympics are heavily divided in the UK. According to a BBC poll, 64% of people think we’ve spent too much on the games. However, 51% of people in London think the games will be good for the city according to a separate YouGov poll for the London Evening Standard. Yet, no matter what your opinion is on the games, there is no argument that they are going to have a big impact on London. Here’s a look at some of the numbers:

Browse more data visualizations.

Some key highlights for me are:

  • The fact that London will host the world’s largest McDonalds.
  • There are more than twice as many reporters as athletes.
  • 29.4 million tourists will supposedly visit the UK for the Games and surrounding events. (This number seems absurdly unrealistic considering the UK recorded 29.8 million visitors in the whole of 2010, according to Visit Britain.)

So what do you think of the London 2012 Olympic Games? Love them? Hate them? Meh? Leave your comment below: