2025 Blogging Stats Transparency Post

Hello friends c:

I decided to change the title from Book Blogging Stats Transparency to Blogging Stats Transparency for 2025’s post because while I do primarily focus on bookish posts and consider myself a book blogger, I also make posts that belong in other niches. Plus, I think it’s relevant to all regardless of what type of blogger you are.

This year marks the fourth year I’ve done this series of posts and it’s hard to believe next year marks a half decade.

If you’ve followed along from the first post way back in 2022, thanks for joining along in my brand of chaos in this little corner of the internet. I hope you’ve found them as fascinating as I did when putting this post together. If this is your first time, welcome. I hope you stick around and find this post helpful. 🙂

Let’s get going into 2025! I’m actually earlier than my usual February/March despite spending most of December sick. As always with these types of posts, the intention isn’t to brag about my numbers or audience but rather to normalize them.

Things that May have Affected Stats

Nothing broke in 2025! At least, nothing I’ve noticed… but there was one thing that happened not too long ago and if you guessed rebrand, you would be absolutely right.

With the rebrand, there would definitely be things that would be affected by this change, and I was very much prepared to lose some data in the process when transferring from my old name. But I’m happy to report that most all went well aside from Google Analytics for a little bit after my host finished moving the site — I forgot to add in the GA code after. 😅

Last year I mentioned about Jetpack changing some things regarding access to stats in 2024 and as a result I downloaded a couple of alternative plugins to test out, namely WP Statistics, and see if there’s much difference with Jetpack in tracking. For this year’s post, the intention was to screenshot from both plugins, but with the rebrand, WP Statistics didn’t carry over the stats like Jetpack and GA was (or it did, but it was from the staging site, which would have virtually no traffic aside from a couple friends I recruited into making sure the new site wasn’t broken) — the plugin keeps this information local, though, so it makes sense for me to lose about two months worth of data.

So with all of that said, this year will just be stats from Jetpack, and hopefully next year I’ll get around to showing from both Jetpack and WP Statistics. No rebrand next year for sure, and hopefully nothing will break otherwise.

Total Page Views

I intentionally tried to lower down the page views as the rebrand became more real and close, mostly because I wanted there to be as little interruption as possible when the move did happen. It’s a little difficult when you get at least 1k views a month these days, though. I tried posting much less at the beginning of the year (July/August had more posts since I wanted to get some out of the way before the hiatus) and very intentionally avoided blog hopping, not that the latter matters too much because I’ve always been quite terrible at blog hopping. 🥲

I suppose my efforts had some fruition, though, as 2025 had a total of 14,762 views, which is less than 2024 with 18,618 views. You can kind of see it in the way the months kind of dip from April through October that there’s some intention possibly involved (with the possibility that it would’ve gone that way anyway) — there’s more of a U-curve in 2025 compared to past years. July and August do go up a bit, but I was also posting more to get some posts out before my rebrand hiatus and there was a blog tour which probably played a part.

Blog Followers and Average Page Views

2025 jumped from 297 WordPress followers to 307. It’s about the same jump as 2023 to 2024, so we remain a slow but steady growth here.

I also wanted to start including my follower count on MSN as the majority of my posts are cross posted there (no other stat info will be provided). Unfortunately the earliest I can go back to is April 2025 since I didn’t consider tracking that, so the numbers are going to be off. I had 533 followers at the time, and I currently have 700 followers entering 2026. This information is publicly available on the blog’s MSN page, so there won’t be any screenshots.

Average page views for 2025 dropped to 40 views while 2024’s was 51. Despite the drop, though, it’s still some growth if we take away some of the anomalies from the past few years and compare this to the last time my stats were “normal,” which was back in 2022. I consider it a personal win.

Number of Posts

2025 actually had more posts than 2024, though not by much. I posted 29 times in 2025 while 2024 only had 25 posts. My posts were much longer, too – the amount of words is enough to write a full novella or the start of a novel. I probably have enough for a whole trilogy throughout blogging – that’s a lot of yapping.

Consistency

I love having a spreadsheet that compares the total monthly views, average daily views and number of posts all in one picture even if the spreadsheet would’ve eventually gotten too big. This year’s column is a little different with some color coding: red represents the months I was officially on hiatus for the rebrand and purple is when I went live with the rebrand.

Something I’ve noticed is that while consistent posting might play a small part in the ups and downs in the stats, it’s not necessarily the only thing. And while it might play a part in the stats of some blogs, it fortunately doesn’t play a huge part in mine.

There’s a lot of other factors involved, like November-January usually having a little more because of breaks and the holiday season, so people have more time to read blogs. March might sometimes go up because of spring break, and the summer months might also have a surge due to libraries hosting the summer reading challenge and people looking for recommendations. The timing of a review may play a part, too, especially if it’s a relatively recent release or the sequel to a popular series.

I’ll talk a little more about it later in traffic sources, but last year ChatGPT was a referral, so that is now likely playing a part in blog stats. I hate that for all of us bloggers.

Top 5-10 Posts

A little zooming required for 2025’s top ten posts, too, but I don’t think it was as much as 2024. There’s two home pages because one is a custom-built one and the other is the blog archives of the latest posts.

And as always, the top 5 linked for your reading if you’re interested. (They say self-promotion is sometimes good for you.)

1. Love Between Fairy and Devil (2022)
2. Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland
3. Meteor Garden (2018 Reboot)
4. Immortal Consequences by I.V. Marie
5. Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

2025’s top 5 posts have two books that were released in the same year which was a pleasant surprise. Immortal Consequences was the GMA (Good Morning America) Young Adult Book Club pick for August, so that likely played a part in addition to the one I joined the blog tour for.

Great Big Beautiful Life was one of the biggest releases of this year since Emily Henry is one of the biggest authors out there currently, so that doesn’t come as a huge surprise. I also posted the review not too long after the book was published since I managed to snag a copy soon after release, so that possibly played a part since the book was fresh on everyone’s radar. Another thing that played a part: the book is a bit different from Henry’s signature romances, so there have been some mixed feelings among the community. Negative feedback is still marketing much like bad publicity is still publicity.

Meteor Garden has historically been 1-2 for the past half decade (!!!), so it was a little surprise to see it in 3rd for 2025. The second and third book in The Broken Blade trilogy both came out in 2025 and Five Broken Blades is the first, so it’s very possible that played a part since historically I’ve seen reviews for previous books in a series receive an uptick in views when a sequel comes out.

Comments and Engagement

Last year I decided to uninstall WP ULike, which works similar to the Jetpack likes, but you don’t need a WordPress account to like a post. It’s nice to have that option because it makes this function more accessible to those who don’t have a WordPress account, but it does make it possible for someone with an account to like the post in the reader and also like the post on the frontend, which would skew the stats.

However, not everyone uses the reader, so like last year, we’re going to look at this as though all of these are unique. WP ULike doesn’t have the option to filter by year (only the total and the current year), so there’s a bit of extra math involved.

On Jetpack for 2025, we have 104 likes, which is more than 2024’s 67 likes.

For WP ULike, we have 83 for 2025 with 65 likes for 2024. (I’m so glad I’m doing these posts now and found the plugin in 2024 and not 2020. I think I’d wither while compiling.)

In total for both combined, there were 187 likes in 2025 with an average of 6.45 likes per post, which is an increase from 2024’s total of 127 likes and an average of 5.1 likes per post. I also decided to make things easier for myself in the future by adding in a sheet just for calculating all of this, which I’ll show below.

The far corner just makes sure I’m doing my math right because I’m not that confident in myself to make sure I’m putting in numbers corrently. Call it my reassurance that I’m doing great.

Traffic Sources

As always, search engines provide the most traffic to my blog with the WordPress Reader being second. Social media is third for me with email subscription (follow.it) right after. Most likely this is referring to their feed directory, which my blog is listed on since I have a paid plan.

I have not been on X (Twitter) nor have I been sharing posts, so there’s no traffic from there. I do have some traffic from Pinterest still as some of my old pins do circulate around and Facebook as I try to share my posts in blogger groups when I can. Instagram scarcely gets traffic since I haven’t been posting there since 2020 unless it’s to my personal account, and I don’t link my blog there.

I get a few hits from LinkedIn as I did have my blog listed as part of my portfolio link and experience, however, I’ve removed it with the rebrand and after getting full-time at the library.

Last year there were hits from ChatGPT and this year has received an increase from that as a source as expected. I’ve also noticed some hits from Gemini this year (not shown but it’s much further down), which is Google’s AI. I’m sure we’ll see more from both in 2026’s stats, and I’m also sure the total amount of page views for the year will continue to see a change as people increasingly rely on AI. I hate that for all of us, truly.

I’ve also noticed with AI* people can now track down my real name and information without going through as much work as they would have to in the past, so that’s also why I’ve decided to remove it from my LinkedIn. This doesn’t change anything, though, as the things you put on the Internet are always out there and if someone really wanted to find me, then they definitely can. But I’m going to try and make it as difficult as possible for them for my own peace of mind.

*I don’t like AI, but I do think it’s important to search yourself up sometimes to see what results pop up and set up Google Alerts.

In addition, I’m at a stage in my career where I don’t really need my blog to boost that experience any longer. I do have my portfolio still, which I’ve made password-protected, since I do want the option to have the blog as a boost to my resume as needed in the future and retain some of the pieces already there. I could remove it completely, but I think Future Hannah will thank current Hannah for keeping it; it’s so much easier (in my opinion) to update periodically with recent pieces than it is to start from scratch.

Audience

2025 was really fascinating to look back on when it comes to the top 5 countries that came to visit. In most of my years, the US is always the top country (makes sense, since I’m US-based and much of what we consume is quite western-centric) with the UK and Canada floating around and occasionally Australia. In recent years India has also been in the top 5, and I’ve also noticed my audience has pivoted toward an Asian audience – I noted last year it’ll be interesting to see how this develops in 2025’s stats.

Not much of this has changed: the US continues to be first, and the UK and Canada continue to float around in the top 5. India is also in the top 5 again, though if you’ve followed this series from the very beginning*, you’ll notice a returning country from way back in 2020-2021: China. Back then I did have a C-drama that climbed its way to being the top post and still remains in the top 5 to this day, so that likely played a part.

*I do not assume you remember the information from the posts because I too do not remember them. But I’ll assume you peeked at them again while reading this like I did while writing.

I haven’t been paying too much attention to my stats throughout the year, but usually by June/July there’s a rough idea of which countries will be in the top 5 with the occasional shuffling around the rest of the year among the top 7. So the UK might be 5th in July but it might climb up to 3rd or the Philippines might be 2nd and drop down to 6th.

What makes 2025’s fascinating is China isn’t in the Top 5 or even Top 10 for most of the year, so you’d think that would be the same for the entire year. I haven’t been writing anything related to Asian dramas since 2022 (I’m not even watching any Asian dramas lately; I just haven’t had any energy), which is the last time this same pattern emerged for me. That’s not to say one of my drama posts didn’t make the rounds on Chinese social media somewhere or that a book didn’t get translated into Chinese – all of these could’ve happened, and I’m just not aware of it. And it’s also very possible these could be bots (but this could apply to any country). Despite making the annual stats post, I try not to obsess over stats or play a comparison game. China is actually in the top 1-2 countries for November and December 2025, which I find very interesting and now I’m going to be a little nosy for at least the next few months. 😂

Final Thoughts

This year had a little more math involved with trying out alternative options and making things more accessible – more spreadsheets, too! There’s also more AI involved in referral traffic, which again, I hate that for all of us as bloggers. I wrote a post a few years ago asking if book blogging is dying and mentioning that it’s evolved rather than dying, but with AI becoming more prevalent, I kind of want to revisit that post a little, though maybe not in 2026.

I don’t necessarily think that book blogging is dying, as I think there will be people who will be wanting content with that human touch and voice that AI just can’t output or replicate, but AI does change blogging and will continue to do so (unfortunately). There’s going to be bloggers who use AI in their content from writing to images (you won’t find it here, though! Not intentionally, at least.), and likely page views will go down as people can input their query and get an answer without having to leave ChatGPT or Google search results directly. It’ll be interesting to see.

Thanks for sticking around for another nearly 3k word stats post; I’ll see you around with more numbers next year!