December ended with a bang on the blog, with a sudden, dramatic rise in page views. In the previous month’s look back I’d expressed some skepticism about this increased traffic, particularly as it had not been accompanied by a similar rise in unique visitors. Well, January saw a record being set for page views on the blog, with an increase of nearly 10% over December, which had been the previous record holder. But this rise in page views was accompanied by a dramatic rise in the unique visitor count, which was 56% higher than the previous high in December. This time, however, there’s no mystery about the increased traffic. Almost all of the increase came from India and had to do primarily with one post. Unusually, this post is a whisky review—for the Indri-Trini; but the reasons for the sudden uptick in interest in it had to do not with the whisky itself but with the proprietors. You see, in early January it finally became news in India that the owner and face of Indri is someone who had previously been convicted of a heinous murder. This seems to have become news belatedly because the company is making ownership moves in Scotland and the press there, unlike in India, reported on his history. As my review from a year ago had already brought up this history, it turns out it is one of the top hits for Google searches for “Indri Manu Sharma“. And so.
And when I say that there was a huge uptick in traffic because of this one post, I mean it. In just two days in early January this review picked up more page views than the most read post for 2024 had received in the entire year! And while the traffic has since tapered off and there are 11 months left in the year, it seems unlikely that any other post will be able to challenge its hold on the top spot for 2025. It also seems to have raised the profile of one of the restaurant reviews I posted the week after the Indri traffic surge: my review of lunch at Hotel Ramachandra in Coonoor also picked up many thousand page views in just two weeks. Well, all of this seems like a one-off; I expect February’s traffic numbers will return to normal soon enough. But I’m always happy to have my readership in India go up and hope that at least a few of the new visitors will stick around.
This is what the entire top 10 list by page views looked like in January:
- Indri-Trini
- Hotel Ramachandra (Coonoor, Dec 2024)
- Bukhara (Delhi, March 2022)
- In and Around Mangwon Market (Seoul, March 2024)
- Kwality (Delhi, January 2023)
- Christmas Lima Beans with Coriander and Roasted Cumin
- Eating at Mercato Centrale (Florence, June 2023)
- The Bombay Canteen (Bombay, January 2024)
- Mingles (Seoul, February 2024)
- Hoa Bien (St. Paul, MN)
Page views for the Indri review, by the way, were more than for the rest of the top 10 combined. No surprises in any of the rest given traffic patterns in 2024—though I really do wish I would hear occasionally from some of the many people who are apparently cooking that Christmas lima bean dish.
What can you expect in February? More of the same, in terms of content if not dramatic traffic. As I said last week, I did discover one leftover restaurant report from Delhi in December and I’ll put that up soon. Otherwise the restaurant content will all be from the Twin Cities metro. There won’t be a Twin Cities restaurant report this coming week, however: due to lingering illness in the family we didn’t go out to eat this weekend. Instead, I’ll have a Twin Cities immigrant grocery report. Cooking content continues to go up on my Instagram at a regular clip—if that’s what you’re more interested in, that’s where you should go. Booze reviews will continue at the same weekly pace. It’ll be all single malt whisky again this month.