The year 2012 ends today and it’s been another heck of a year. To wrap up the year, I am reflecting on the top articles like last year. 404 Tech Support enjoyed well over half a million pageviews in 2012.
I’m hoping visitors found the answers to their questions and may have even subscribed to the RSS feed or returned for future articles. In 2012, we published 376 articles. This brings our total number of articles up to 1,579 – not too bad for a single author that works full time and takes classes part-time.
It’s certainly fascinating to look at these year-end analytics. For the top 10 visited articles, most of them were also the top articles in 2011 while there are some new additions and some positions changed around.
The top 10 404TS articles based on visits in 2012:
- Microsoft Word: “This modification is not allowed because the selection is locked”
- Unclaimed.org – A legitimate site that allows you to find money owed to you
- How to install the Disc-less Netflix app on the Sony PlayStation 3
- How to apply patches (.msp) to group policy deployed software (.msi)
- How to install the Disc-less Netflix app on the Nintendo Wii
- RSOP and GPResult – Must know tools when using group policy
- Referencing cells from Another Worksheet or Workbook in Excel 2007
- Deploying Java through Group Policy and Java RE improvements
- Get Adobe Flash without extras
- Extracting the MSI from the latest Adobe Reader setup executable
Most memorable 404TS moment from 2012:
In 2012, I can most notably take pride creating in-depth, early articles on Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Office 2013 along with other new and updated technologies.
To be a bit of a Debbie Downer, Google updated its Panda search algorithm this past year and many sites were negatively affected by the changes. While it was meant to bring high quality content to the top of search results and punish content farms, it seemed to have the opposite effect. In my personal opinion, Google Search results have been less helpful than they were in the past and quality websites have been quite negatively affected by significant drops in traffic. 404TechSupport.com was one of those sites affected, though with our lower traffic, we had less to lose. In 2013, we can fruitlessly hope that Google won’t be so belligerent and that smaller sites like mine can still have an equal opportunity against the bigger publishers when it comes down to quality and providing the content that matches what people are looking for.
On another downer topic, we are still awaiting for Illinois to repeal the “Amazon Tax” that was struck down as unconstitutional in April, 2012, over a year after it was signed into effect.
I started TechNoose.com as a play on the phrase “Tech News” in late 2011 with an announcement here at the beginning of the year. In 2012, it continued to grow as I directed more articles on the general topic of technology and industry news there from 404 Tech Support so I could focus this site on being an excellent resource for IT pros and anybody searching for tech support. There are many things I like about the site and if it were easy to swap the posts, traffic, reputation, and revenue from 404TS over, I would strongly consider it. Like all things, I was able to make a better website and organize it better with the years of experience I have writing for the web and using WordPress, whose updates and improvements over the years have also helped the efforts.
The content on 404TS did get a bit of a reorganization of categories based on things I learned setting up TechNoose. That followed getting a new theme that flows a little bit better and embraces multimedia more through WordPress’s featured image setting.
I started AssumeAwesome.com in late August, 2012. It already has over 332 posts with only a quarter of year going at it. Similar to TechNoose, it was created to provide a better niche for my personal site and give me a place to share all the cool things found across the Internet. I liked developing it and utilizing a responsive theme for a better experience across all sorts of devices and resolutions. The site shows posts in the categories of books, clothes, food, humor, images, movies, music videos, pop culture, places, science, sports, tech, toys/games, video games, and more. Not only has it allowed me to share content worth sharing but it has also taught me a bit in affiliate sales.
Traffic has held pretty steady through 2012. I wish there was more growth but with Google updates and plenty of distractions to posting more content, I’m grateful for all the visitors that stop by my small little corner on the web. We still have that unusually consistent traffic pattern of receiving the majority of traffic on weekdays with a significant drop-off on the weekends.
Thank you!
Appreciation goes out to a lot of people for making 2012 a good year on 404TS and beyond. My family and friends were vital for the life beyond the blog.
A big thank you goes out to all of the sponsors that have helped pay the bills to keep the site up. WiredTree has also done a great job this past year keeping the server steady and available as I upgraded to a dedicated server.
Of course, most thanks go out to the readers of 404 Tech Support. It would be nothing without you. Thanks for coming back. I appreciate all the feedback and comments that have been left asking questions, suggesting alternatives, challenging an article, or voicing appreciation for the write-up. I look forward to 2013 with 404TechSupport.com because of you.
Have a safe and happy new year’s celebration!