Last night, while I was waiting for the 49ers to wrap up the Divisional Championship, I had a quick look at Google Analytics to see how the year had gone here. One or two interesting things popped up, so I thought I’d do the traditional thing and share them.

The most read post of the year was actually one I wrote in 2011: “Female Invisibility Bingo”. As it turned out, of course, none of the women authors I talked to wanted to be associated with a “feminist” project.

The top post of 2012 was “UK Government OKs Sex Ed. Guide Based on Gor Book”, which does not surprise me in the slightest. I knew that one was gold dust when I wrote it.

Interestingly both of these eclipsed a post about Neil Gaiman: “Friends and Phobias”. That’s unusual. Neil is normally responsible for my top-rated posts.

Those three posts “went viral” to some small degree, by which I mean that they might just be visible if you plotted their readers against a selection of “nothing here, I’m busy” posts on John Scalzi’s blog. The most popular posts amongst more regular readers were “On Harassment Policies” and “A Time Before Time”.

SF Signal was my primary source of referrals. Many thanks to John & co for that. Second on the list was the BBC. That’s because they linked back to my reviews of the Lost Kingdoms of Africa programs. Thanks are also due to Locus, James Nicoll, Kevin and Larry Nolen.

By far the most common search term used to get here was “cheryl morgan”. Somewhat to my surprise, the second best was “cathy butler”.

The USA and UK accounted for the vast majority of my visitors. Finland, Australia and Canada were top of the rest of the world.

London was by far the top city as far as traffic sources go, having more than 3 times the number of its nearest rival. It was followed by New York, Bristol, Helsinki, Portland (Oregon), Cardiff, Melbourne and Toronto. San Francisco doesn’t feature because Google counts each little city in the Bay Area separately.

As far as personal things go, here are a few things I will remember 2012 for fondly:

• Being a Guest of Honour at the Eurocon in Zagreb, and being on TV for the first time
• Finally getting to Ã…con (which is Ã…some)
• A second World Fantasy Award nomination
• Meeting Alison Bechdel
• Discussing 2013 with Kim Stanley Robinson over a few fine whiskies
• Caitlín R. Kiernan’s astonishingly good The Drowning Girl
• Getting to watch the SF Giants winning the World Series with Kevin
• Matt Cain’s Perfect Game
• Discovering great Mexican food in Bristol at My Burrito UK
• Istrian food and mistletoe schnapps
• Being invited to Manchester to give a talk on SF&F to the local trans group
• Being in the middle of hosting a live webcast when Ustream pulled the plug on the Hugos
• The Avengers movie
• Taking the waters at Bath with Kevin
• The SF Crossing the Gulf podcast series
• Publishing novels by Juliet E. McKenna and Lyda Morehouse
• The Great Finnish Book Buying Event

There are probably a few important things I have forgotten, for which I apologize. Also by far the best thing about 2012 was a family-related event that I’m not at liberty to talk about yet, but a few of you do know about it and hopefully more will hear of it in the years to come. And finally, here’s looking forward to a busy and exciting 2013, starting with the inaugural Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Fiction at Pembroke College, Oxford.