Here is a data breakdown from March 2023 to show you :).  

• Why that month? That is one of the last months I have data for Google Analytics. Google forced everyone to move from GA to GA4 (and killed off GA), but GA4 is a nightmare. So, instead, I moved to Plausible.io for stats, but they can't dump a CSV of my data to run this type of analysis (I'd have to build something using their API to crunch this).
• Eventually, I hope to extend this data to authors in a dashboard, but we don't have the money to build it yet. 

How much traffic do lists get?

I analyzed 8,000 book recommendation lists at Shepherd for March 2023, and here are the results.

How much traffic do the top 250 lists receive?

The top list received 2,070 views (24,840 views over one year).

The top 10 lists received an average of 1,241 views (14,892 views over one year).

The top 100 lists received an average of 501 views (6,012 views over one year).

The top 250 lists received an average of 334 views (4,008 views over one year).

How much traffic do the top 50% of lists receive?

The top 10% of lists received an average of 183 views (2,196 views over one year).

The lists in the 80%-89% percentile received an average of 119 views (1,428 in a year).

The lists in the 70%-79% percentile received an average of 90 views (1,080 in a year).

The lists in the 60%-69% percentile received an average of 73 views (876 in a year).

The lists in the 50%-59% percentile received an average of 61 views (732 in a year).

How much traffic do the bottom 50% of lists receive?

The bottom 50% of lists received an average of 34 views (408 in a year).

The bottom 25% of lists received an average of 3 views (36 in a year - but more as newly published). 

The bottom 10% of lists received an average of 2 views (24 in a year - but more as newly published).

Remember that many of the lists in that bottom grouping are new!

It usually takes 6 months for a list to get ranked in search engines and get traffic from those sources. We drive internal traffic to it, but search engines are a significant source of our traffic (our guide to how we drive traffic to lists is here). 

For example: 

• I grabbed a random list that had received 1 visitor in March 2023, and it was receiving 5 to 15 views a month now. 
• I grabbed another and it was receiving 12 to 20 views a month. 
• I grabbed another randomly and it was receiving 30 to 50 views a month. 

Why do some lists get a lot of traffic?

One of the biggest factors is whether those lists match external searches on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Duck Duck Go. Sometimes, your list is a perfect match on Bing for people searching for the "best books about the Battle of Midway" or something similar. Usually, this works best when it is a long-tail search. 

It can take 6 months to 3 years to rank a list for different terms. If their visitors like your list, they will keep moving you higher in the rankings and drive more traffic (plus, we do a lot to ensure everything is designed to help you). But they can also move you lower. We had one list that was getting thousands of visitors a month from Google, and then, after a few years, Google moved it lower. Google changes constantly, so it is a bit of a casino operation (especially since 2023, as Google is struggling with AI spam, and they are struggling to identify great content like ours). 

Some lists drive a lot of excitement with social media users or on other websites, and we occasionally see spikes from those types of traffic. 

And, of course, your genre and topics matter a lot within Shepherd. We might get thousands of users searching for science fiction but only a few hundred for memoirs. It takes us many years to rank for the most competitive searches and as we expand our marketing this increases the volume of readers coming to the website. 

What are the reasons some lists do not get a lot of traffic?

The list is not a good match for any search term. Or, the list is aimed at a tiny technical audience, and thus, fewer people are looking for them on search engines, within Shepherd, and on social media. As Shepherd grows, we can help discover more and more lists within our database.