Top 15 Traffic Referrers of 2015

As a blogger I’m always curious as to how readers arrive at Kingdom in the Midst. Do they come from social media, other websites, or via search? These metrics can help any blogger determine the kind of content that attracts the most readers. Overwhelmingly the traffic at Kingdom in the Midst is driven by Facebook. I expect this is true for most blogs.

Below are the Top 15 Referrers of traffic to this blog in 2015. Drum roll, please:

1. Facebook
   The social media giant referred more than nine times the amount of traffic that arrived at Kingdom in the Midst by organic search (second top), and about seven times the amount of referrers 2-15 combined. Every blogger should send Mark Zuckerberg a unicorn.
2. Organic search
   The vast majority of organic search was directed to evergreen content, including images. In a couple of posts search outperformed social media, most notably Ahmed’s clock vs suitcase bomb meme. That post  received an early link from the number 9 referrer, helping the article to gain search authority. Google led the way with about 90% of the referrals, surpassing the next 17 search engines combined.
3. Twitter
   On a day-to-day basis Twitter sits in a solid third. After Twitter’s puzzling decision to restrict its share-numbers (notice at the top of this page the Twitter button has no numbers beside it), this could well fall in 2016, especially if articles are picked up by sites as large as 4, 5, and 6. The percentage of traffic driven by Twitter to total page views on my blog has dropped by around half since the API change affected my share buttons.
4. ChristianityToday.com
   This referrer is driven on the strength of my boss Ed Stetzer’s blog, The Exchange, where my posts were included in his links posts a few times.
5. WashingtonPost.com
   These referrals were a result of my posts there (For God So Loved Caitlyn Jenner, and I Struggle with Patriotic Worship Services).
6. FaithIt.com
   Referral traffic from Caitlyn Jenner post.
7. Reddit
   Referrals were to several posts throughout the year.
8. BloggingTheologically.com
   Aaron Armstrong has been gracious to include a number of my posts in his links posts this year.
9. FreeThoughtBlogs.com
   A few hundred page views were referred during the Ahmed’s clock discussion.
10. Feedly.com
11. Disqus.com
    I highly recommend Disqus for your comments plugin on WordPress.
12. ChristianPost.com
    As a result of cross-posting a number of stories in this and previous years.
13. lnkd.in (LinkedIn shortcode)
    More referrals than either Pinterest or G+.
14. Flipboard.com
15. RealClearReligion.com
    100% were referrals to For God So Loved Caitlyn Jenner (my top post of the year). It was featured on the main page, then apparently dropped into a comment thread another time.

Also rans: Pinterest (#17), and Google Minus Plus (#25, just edging out smoke signals).

Honorable mentions: My friends Mike Leake and Lynn Pryor referred traffic to Kingdom in the Midst this year, as did multi-contributor site SBC Voices.