Who Loves 12MC in the United States?

Who loves the Twelve Mile Circle website the most in the United States? No surprise this time.

It’s Washington, DC

Washington Monument on 4th of July 2009. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I examined the subset of 12MC visitors arriving on the website from the United States and compared it to state populations in order to derive per capita ratios. Yes, we all understand that the District of Columbia is not a state. However, it’s considered a “state equivalent” for certain statistical purposes by the US Census Bureau, and that’s good enough for me. I know I mention that every time I equate the District to a State. I do that only to prevent random one-time visitors (not you guys) from mentioning the same thing repeatedly in the comments. It’s a defensive maneuver.

By far, 12MC has its deepest penetration of readership in Washington, DC. It is possible, even probable, that one could enter just about any restaurant, club, shop, office building or apartment in Washington, DC and multiple people would have visited the Twelve Mile Circle website. That’s both humbling and a little difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Per capita visitors drop off quickly from there. By and large it still meets my preconceived notions. Mid-Atlantic states such as Virginia, Maryland and Delaware all occupy the top tier. That was my logical guess before I ran the analysis and the numbers tell a similar story. I focus a lot of attention on geo-oddities in the United States, and that’s even more true for my home base in the Mid-Atlantic. I generate a lot of local content and it attracts lots of local readers. Case closed.


Then Alaska

However I encountered one big surprise. Let’s set-aside Washington, DC since it’s not a “real” state. The state that supplied the highest per capita ratio of visitors to Twelve Mile Circle was… ALASKA! Huh?!?

Kenai Fjords. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I figured Alaska would do well. I’ve written any number of articles that featured Alaskan content because it’s such an incredible location for geo-extremes. Anytime there’s a northern this or a remote that it’s likely to involve Alaska. My article index map is flush with Alaska links. In addition to that, I traveled to Alaska a couple of summers ago and wrote a slew of travelogues.

Wrap all that Alaskan goodness together and it results in an impressive number of visitors from the 49th state. Then throw-in the small population and it creates a powerful per capita ratio. I didn’t think it could possibly be higher than Virginia, my beloved Commonwealth. Nonetheless, that’s where the math led me.

The U.S. per capita ratios allow me to explore a little deeper because I’ve recorded numerous visitors from every state, territory or district. I can flip this one on its head and determine who avoids 12MC the most too. We know the Mid-Atlantic and Alaska craves more 12MC. What are the states that can truly live without it?


The Bottom of the Pack

Some things never change. I looked back to the very early days of the website. One stubborn state didn’t send a single visitor to 12MC for the longest time. I wrote Arkansas (finally) Checks In on the happy day I recorded that initial visitor. Since then I’ve counted another 1,498 Arkansans, however that still doesn’t elevate it from last place. No state dislikes 12MC more than Arkansas.

Alabama and Oklahoma came in a close second and third. I have a decent amount of content for all three of the laggards, or at least no less than surrounding states, so I have to imagine that geo-oddities don’t resonate as much with those audiences. Maybe I can turn that around if I spend some concentrated time traveling through there and creating more travelogue articles. It seemed to work for Alaska.


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Comments

7 responses to “Who Loves 12MC in the United States?”

  1. Jbapo Avatar
    Jbapo

    Do you think that maybe TMC’s secret admirer could be skewing the statistics?

    1. Twelve Mile Circle Avatar

      Good point, Jbapo — 12MC traffic has increased exponentially since right around that time. She could be!

      One can only hope… 😉

  2. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    can we see the whole ranked list?

    1. Twelve Mile Circle Avatar

      Here it is. As someone pointed out in the last article, this could be skewed to a degree because people reading 12MC using the RSS feed wouldn’t register a hit on the site.

      1. Washington, DC
      2. Alaska
      3. Virginia
      4. Maryland
      5. Wisconsin
      6. Delaware
      7. Minnesota
      8. Vermont
      9. Maine
      10. Massachusetts
      11. Wyoming
      12. Michigan
      13. Washington
      14. New Hampshire
      15. Connecticut
      16. Iowa
      17. Oregon
      18. Illinois
      19. Colorado
      20. New York
      21. Kansas
      22. Utah
      23. Louisiana
      24. Pennsylvania
      25. Ohio
      26. Rhode Island
      27. North Dakota
      28. Nebraska
      29. Georgia
      30. New Mexico
      31. Missouri
      32. New Jersey
      33. North Carolina
      34. South Dakota
      35. Montana
      36. Florida
      37. West Virginia
      38. Arizona
      39. Mississippi
      40. Tennessee
      41. Indiana
      42. South Carolina
      43. Texas
      44. Idaho
      45. California
      46. Nevada
      47. Kentucky
      48. Hawaii
      49. U.S. Virgin Islands
      50. Oklahoma
      51. Alabama
      52. Arkansas
      53. Guam
      54. American Samoa
      55. Puerto Rico
      56. Northern Mariana Islands
      1. Kevin Avatar
        Kevin

        thanks- very interesting, been staring at it for 20 minutes. Compared it to US pop pct and Washington and Guam hit the exact number for both (13 and 53).

  3. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Just curious, what method of tracking (unique visitors, page views, something else) to come up with these rankings?

    1. Twelve Mile Circle Avatar

      It’s “visits” as defined by Google Analytics. Unique Visitors is a smaller number (a subset of visits) and Page Views is a larger number (visits multiplied by 1.68 pages per visit)

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