Fourth anniversary of this blog

By publishing a post, embellished with a picture of Fernand Chatelain's sculpture Bonjour aux promeneurs, this weblog, four years ago, on November 11th 2008 began striving for a place in the blogosphere.

picture courtesy of Marcello 14 (Flickr)

In that first post I said  that the idea behind the weblog was to make better known the creations made by people like Picassiette, in and around their homes, creations I briefly denoted as "outsider  environments". 

In 2008 I was mostly familiar with French sites, but knowing about some sites in other European countries, it seemed like a good idea to give my blog a European approach. So the blog was named Outsider Environments Europe.

I had noticed that visionary environments or folk art environments in the United States had their blogs and websites with general overviews and that such a web resource is not available at the European level,

So why not filling this gap, doing a blog about European treasures, writing in English to reach both an American, a European and an international audience, with a focus on inventarising and documenting these creative sites. I saw no objection, and just began.

And now, four years later, how has the blog developed in terms of reaching an international audience?

Some data

Here are some data per date November 9, 2012 from blog stats:

* All time number of visitors (rounded down) 123.000, which is an all time daily average of 84 visitors.

* The number of daily visitors has grown during the years, last month counted a daily average of 215 visitors..

* All time page views by country:
   
United States          22088         17.9 %
Netherlands            19625         15.9 %
France                    15414         12.5 %
United Kingdom    11074           9.0 %
Italy                          5830           4.7 %
Germany                   5311           4.3 %
Spain                        3445           2.8 %
Finland                     2368           1.9 %
Russia                       2353           1.9 %
Belgium                    1981           1.6 %
top ten                                        72.7 %
other                        33542         27.2 %
total                       123031         99.9 %

This result, the USA on the first place followed by a variety of European countries. is just what I had in mind when starting this blog.

The category "other" comprises a variety of countries from all over the world, all of them with a percentage below 1.6 %. 

What is the audience looking for? That's not so easy to answer. The Feedjit device gives some, not quantifiable indications: some people who somehow came along the blog became followers and often return to see what's new, others arrive being referred by other blogs and many arrive by entering a search term in a search engine.

Such a search term can be rather general, like "outsider art", "environments in France", "mosaic decorations", etc, but it can also explicitly indicate the name of the environment and/or its author. Here is a breakdown of this category from the blog stats:

* All time most searched posts

Robert Garcet, Ebenezer Tower, 1144

Willem van Genk, Arnhem bus station, 997

Chomo, Village of preludian art, 635

Bodan Litnianski, Garden of shells, 615

Facteur Cheval, Palais Idéal, 613

Elis Sinistö, Villa Mehu, 511

Robert Vasseur, Broken crockery house, 419

Filippo Bentivegna, Enchanted castle, 383

Ger Leegwater, Kremlin in the Netherlands, 378

Abbé Fouré, Sculpted rocks, 374

Outsider environments in Belgium, France, Italy, Finland and the Netherlands in the top score of visitors with explicit searches. Is that European, or what?

So far as regards quantitative developments. Visitors may assess qualitative developments.

Sources that have contributed to any quality of this blog, I have acknowledged in a separate page, entitled sources/acknowledgements