statistics

For many years I have not looked at statistics. Between early 2023 and early 2025 I published quite a range of books and now I have a new kind of statistics. Here are my books:

• Franz Eduard Farwerck (1889-1969): His life and work – paperback 3 February 2023;
• Franz Eduard Farwerck (1889-1969): His life and work – Kindle ebook 2 February 2023;
• Franz Eduard Farwerck (1889-1969): Zijn leven en werk – paperback 3 February 2023;
• Franz Eduard Farwerck (1889-1969): Zijn leven en werk – Kindle ebook 2 February 2023;
• Gemengde Vrijmetselarij: in Nederland en Nederlandstalig België – paperback 10 February 2023;
• Gemengde Vrijmetselarij: in Nederland en Nederlandstalig België – Kindle ebook 9 February 2023;
• co-Masonry: Mixed gender Freemasonry around the world – paperback 10 February 2023;
• co-Masonry: Mixed gender Freemasonry around the world – Kindle ebook 9 February 2023;
• Freemasonry & Heathenry – paperback 17 February 2023;
• Freemasonry & Heathenry – Kindle ebook 16 February 2023;
• Gangleri.nl compendium – hardcover 17 February 2023;
• Gangleri.nl compendium – Kindle ebookbook 16 February 2023;
• The Kirwall Scroll Dissected – hardcover 19 June 2024;
• The Kirkwall Scroll Dissected – Kindle ebook 18 June 2024;
• Symbols of Freemasonry: A searchable book of Masonic symbols – hardcover 16 July 2024;
• Symbols of Freemasonry: A searchable book of Masonic symbols – Kindle ebook 4 July 2024;
• The Masonic Museum: Ancient Tracing Boards and other Images of Freemasonry – hardcover 12 February 2025;
• The Masonic Museum: Ancient Tracing Boards and other Images of Freemasonry – paperback 23 January 2025.

These weird publication dates are explainable. For every edition I have to make another book at Amazon KDP. When I publish, there is a (semi-automatic) publication process of Amazon and apparently, this goes more rapidly for ebooks. So much so even, that when I wanted to publish Symbols of Freemasonry, the ebook was already published, while the hardcover was picked up by the Amazon copyright team. I ended expanding the book with sources and published it again almost two weeks later. As for The Masonic Museum, I already had a few paperback editions out before I thought the book was ready for another version, so the hardcover (which has much better printing quality and therefor twice the price) followed somewhat later.

Anyway, even though the printing costs are remarkably low, about the same amount goes to Amazon and then there is a little bit for me. I do not intend to make money with the books, so the prices are as low as possible, I make round prices for every single Amazon store (different countries), but I do not make more than a fraction of a Euro up to a few per book.

The books hardly sell, so when I received the royalties for June I wondered what happened and logged in to see which book did well in that month. I expected it to be the last, but it turned out that almost all books had copies sold in June. I have no idea why.

Two digital copies of the Symbols book (that book really works better in print, also the print is in colour). One copy of the Dutch Farwerck book. One copy of the Dutch co-Masonry book, Freemasonry and Heathenry even, one copy of The Masonic Museum and one of The Kirkwall Scroll Dissected.

May was a more common month. One physical copy of Symbols and one of the Museum.

It has been over two years since I had a look at the statistics. Why do I even bother collecting them? Perhaps they are usefull in a way. More about that later.

I do not even remember when, but the previous plugin that I used for statistics was no longer maintained and a while ago it actually stopped working. I had to look for another simple stats plugin, but the results are quite different from before. Did I misinterpret the previous plugin or do I misinterpret the current one? Do they work much different from eachother? One thing is for sure, the new plugin is hard on me.

The current plugin allows me to pick a period and then gives me a few numbers. I used the period “this year so far” and come to the following numbers:

• Main website, 384 pageviews, that is 3 average daily pageviews over a 120 day period. In this period 233 unique IPs visted either the index page or the website intro. Many people come to the index by following a link to an old website (for example Monas.nl). With the previous plugin I came to almost 40 unique visitors per day. Now just below 2. Quite a difference! Which would be most credible?
• Articles, 2804 pageviews, that is 23 daily average. 1791 Unique IPs. The previous plugin came at 73 unique visitors per day two years ago. When I have a look at the download counter for my ‘downloadable’ articles, I can see that two years ago the counter for the “Traditionalism vs Tradiotionalism” article stood at 307, now I have 337 for the PDF; the Epub went from 31 to 141 (!). “Traditionalistic Asatru” went from 115 to 261 for the PDF and from 45 to 133 for the Epub file. That does not sound too bad;
• Book reviews, 1091 pagesviews in 2016, 9 per day, 535 unique IPs. Those were 85 unique visitors with the other plugin two years ago.
• Film reviews, 415 pagesviews, 3 per day, 70 unique IPs; 38 unique visitors per day two years ago;
• Music reviews, 805, 6 and 276; 86 unique visitors two years ago, 6 now;
• News, 31, 0 and 14. I have not listed the news section previously.

This immediately tells me that close to nobody is going to see this message, since I posted it in the “news” section, which is visited by 14 people in 2016. Thank you for reading this when you are one of those. I am going to share this little text on Facebook and see what happens.

Like two years ago, I am quite surprised that the film reviews section has so few visitors. It is the section with the most updates. Almost every week I review one or two films, while music reviews go a lot slower, books even more and articles especially so. I suppose people have other channels to get ideas for films to watch or the films that I review are boring.

There seems to be more demand for the book reviews. So what are the most popular ones?

• Index, the index of the book reviews section gets 14,64% of the pageviews;
• De Geestelijke Wereld van de Germanen attracted 4,03% (44 hits). A Dutch title on an English website. Below, when I talk about Facebook, you will see how this comes;
• The archive got 3,02% of the visitors, 33 hits;
• The Faulkes translation of the Edda comes next with 2,10% (23 hits) in 2016.

Not really whopping figures. Next are books with 10 to 20 hits in 2016 and two tags.

What about the articles. What are people looking for when they find this website?
Actually, the popular articles are the same as always:

• Rune calendars with 13,37%, 375 hits in 2016;
• Asatru and Hinduism with 299 hits;
• Christian Cabala with 212 hits;
• Angel Magic with 130 hits.

Top search terms list must be taken with a grain of salt, since the top search term “Freemasonry” had 8 hits in 2016 and can never have resulted in any of the articles mentioned above. What is different that most people come with from Google nowadays (or according to the new statistics plugin) 766 in 2016, while Wikipedia brought me 115 hits. Facebook 24, so that is not exactly a visitor attractor even when the counter currently stands at 195 “likes”.

Speaking of Facebook, Facebook has statistics of its own. Let me have a look at these. Facebook, for example, tells me how many people I “reached” with the links to new reviews, etc. that I post. A few numbers to give you an idea. Like I said, there are 195 people who “like” the Facebook page. That does (by and far) not mean that a post reaches 195 people. Perhaps a “reached” person has to click on my message in his or her wall?
I posted the Thorofon review 6 days ago. This post “reached” 36 people. I posted the last film review on the same day, but this one only reached 8 people. On 16 april I “shared” a link to the latest Idehall cd review, 11 people. The latest book review is of the latest Acta Macionica which reached 23 people. Then follow a few posts with 20 to 30 people and the next ‘peak’ is a track that I shared of the new noise project Ausströmen which reached 37 people. That is better than most of my own stuff.
Earlier I mentioned my review of De Geestelijke Wereld van de Germanen, a popular book review. The post linking to this review was “shared” by three people, thus reaching a whopping number of 191 people. It is very clear that Facebook is a social medium and that to reach an audience, that audience has to cooperate without “likes” and “shares” I “reach” usually around 25 people, sometimes a bit more, sometimes less.
As for Facebook’s statistics page. It tells me that in the last week I had one “action” (I suppose this is a “like” or a “share”), six “pageviews” (is that how many times the Facebook page is visited?), 41 “reached persons” (for different posts) and five “involved”s, whatever that may mean.

I am sure that the above was exactly what you have wondered about for years?

Oh, it could be that the website looks different for you. More about that here.

It has been a while, but let me fill you in a bit more about the statistics of this website.

The main site has had 39.7 unique visitors per day in the last week. The last time I checked (a year ago), this was 37 visitors. the main referrer is still Hex Magazine, all the rest is spam.
The most popular searchword are obviously used by people looking for this very website. Gangleri, Gangleri.nl, monas.nl, that sort of search terms.

A year ago I had 90 unique daily visitors on an average day for the articles section. This time I come to 92.7. Taking that nothing much happens there, that is not too bad. Popular articles remain Christian Cabala, Angel Magic and Rune Calendars, but also Germanic Concepts Of Fate and Nine World Of Nordic Mythology. Top referrers remain Wikipedia and Google. Popular search terms “Babylonian calendar”, “nordic mythology”, “cabala” and “nine worlds”.
A new statistic makes the articles that I offer for download in PDF and Epub. “Traditionalism vs Traditionalism” has the counter on 307 for the PDF and 31 for the Epub version, Traditionalistic Asatru respectively 115 and 45. Did anybody hear of download spam? The high number of the first article it a bit weird. Today, it has been downloaded numerous times, three times per minute. I hope my server can handle that. Also I wonder what is the use of this. (Further investigation showed that this file was accessed three times per minute about every half hour. Because I did not like the idea of somebody using so much of my server load, I created a new download package and reset the counter to something fictitious, but more credible.)

On to more happy events. The book reviews section comes to 85 unique visitors per day, which is substantially higher than the 63 visitors of a year ago. Top referrer Google, the rest is mostly spam. The popular search word list looks like the previous, Galdrabók, Peryt Shou, De Tuin Der Goden, Dumezil Loki. Popular entries in this section are a quote about the tripartite soul and two Dutch titles (Tussen Wodan en Widar and Godenschemering). The most popular English title is The Journal For Contemporary Heathen Thought.

Film reviews then. 37,6 Unique visitors per day, 45 a year ago. This is a little strange, since this is the section where most happens. I suppose I do not review popular enough films! The only non-spam referrer in the top referrer list is the Facebook page of this website. Popular reviews remain Tideland, c’Est Arrive Pres De Chez Vous, In The Name Of The Rose and Be With Me.

To close off with the music reviews; 85,6 against 74; Google and Facebook do well. The feed is extraordinary popular, so are general pages like the alphabetical list, the blog and the stories. The awfull World End Broadcasting remains the most popular review (2546 hits) followed by the old album “Mandragora” by Orchis.

Sometimes I find all kind of weird websites indexing my website and giving all kinds of values, rankings, SEO-tips and who knows what. I collected a couple of them. Good for a chuckle.Read More »Other statistics

The number of visitors is substantially lower than before. Perhaps I should start doing quizes and a Facebook campaign?

Main page (website index):
37 average unique per day in the last week
Top referrers Hex Magazine, Google, WordPress, Wikipedia
Popular search terms: mostly Gangleri in different spellings.

Articles:
90 average unique visitors per day in the last week
Top referrers Wikipedia, Facebook, Google and most of the rest is bogus
Popular search terms: babylonian calendar, nordic mythology, cabala, nine worlds
Popular articles: Christian Cabala (280007 hits since counting), Germanic Concepts Of Fate (22232 since counting), Angel Magic (12432 since counting), Nine Worlds (12065 since counting)

Bookreviews:
63 average unique visitors per day in the last week
Top referrers: google and mostly spam referrers
Popular search terms: Galdrabók, Peryt Shou, De Tuin Der Goden, Dumezil Loki, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte.
Popular posts: Tripartite Soul (a quote) (4849 hits since counting), Godenschemering (3384), the Heathen Journal (2592).

Filmreviews:
45 average unique visitors per day in the last week, but peaking between 96 and 25 visitors
Top referrers: Google and a whole lot of spam
Popular search terms: Maaz Christian Volckman (only used 24 times by the way, so why does Google come up relatively high?) and the rest is only 10 in total.
Popular reviews: Tideland (4373), c’Est Arrive Pres De Chez Vous (4260), In The Name Of The Rose (3992) and Be With Me (3362)

Music reviews:
74 average unique visitors per day in the last week, but peaking between 156 and 44 visistors.
Top referrers: Google, the WordPres forum and the Gangleri Facebook page.
Popular search terms: cunttt, real punk (eh?), haus arafna you review, in slaugther natives.
Popular resources: the feed (massive!), the index (high) and after a big gap the alphabetical overview and the blog, then follow a few old reviews.

Somehow I seem to think about statistics in january and august. A short overview:

Main site, 49 unique visiters per day on average in the last week. Popular search terms: “gangleri”, “gangleri.nl”, “www.gangleri”, “monas.nl”, “ganglieri”, “www.gangleri.nl”, “angel magic”, “king gylfi sweden”, “who is gangleri”.

Articles, 120 unique visitors per day. Popular search terms: “babylonian calendar”, “nordic mythology”, “cabala”, “nine worlds”, “the nine realms”, “the nine worlds”
Popular articles: “Germanic concepts of Fate 18541 visits since the start of the count.
Angel Magic 10789
Nine Worlds in Nordic Mythology 10025

Book reviews, 104 unique visitors per day.
Popular search terms: “galdrabók”, “peryt shou”, “de tuin der goden”, “dumezil loki”, “altgermanische religionsgeschichte”, “the temptation to exist”

Film reviews, 130 unique visitors per day. The search results have things displayed in the sidebar (…).

Music reviews, 155 unique visitors per day. Most search terms do not come any higher than 30 times since the start of counting, so those can be ignored.

It has been a while since I checked. Let us see if anything shocking happened since late August.Read More »Statistics

Two months after the previous overview some more statistics about this website for those interested.
Read More »Statistics