Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Ravelry's Top Five Knitting Patterns by Project Numbers

Number 1


Lately I've been looking around the blogosphere for a few new knitting blogs to add to my reader feed. I ended up finding another local knitter who I don't think I've ever met.

While poking around Orange Swan's blog I looked at her popular post list and I read this one. It's from Dec 29 2012. I then repeated her search to see what had changed and the answer is a year later they are the same. While I'm a little surprised, it confirms something I've suspected for some time. Numbered "Top" lists take on a life of their own that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. My top ten popular posts list is also relatively static. I see movement on the bottom two or three posts occasionally but the rest of the list has been static since I added that feature to the page. I'm starting to question if keeping the list there has any real value for my readers. Since I added the topic index I've seen a lot of traffic going directly to the index. Some times I get more direct entries on the index page than on my home page. A few of my friends have told me they really like the index page and are using it frequently. 

Number 2

Number 3


I'm planning to follow up next year to see if the top 5 patterns change. You can check yourself with this search. It's by projects. If you change the search parameter to queues, favourites or popular you will get different results.


Number 4

Number 5


Please let me know what you think about the popular post list in the comments, should I keep or remove it?


5 comments:

  1. What's most interesting is that 4 of the 5 are free patterns - from Knitty. This isn't surprising, just confirms my suspicions. I'll have to go see how many of the 40 or 50 are free patterns.

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    1. I had that thought too! It's pretty scary when I consider the amount of time I spend on writing patterns.

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  2. Exactly! Glad it's not just me that had that thought.

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  3. I thought immediately that they were free Knitty patterns. (Not the Baby Surprise.) The pattern I had published in knitty is the most popular one in my Ravelry account. Two things - it's free, and Knitty has a huge audience.

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  4. The other thing is that these patterns are *years* old, so they have a big lead time. It'll be hard for there to be a shift anytime soon.

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