Viator Viator Travel Blog

We didn’t want the day to pass without wishing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the Viator Travel Blog, which went live exactly one year ago today. Here’s an excerpt from our very first post:

It’s official — the Viator travel blog is up and running. Tell your friends, tell your coworkers, tell random people in the street. The Viator travel blog is a resource for anybody who loves to travel. Check back over the coming weeks and months as we post and share our thoughts on a range of travel topics: from things to do in New York City and Paris tours and activities (the stuff that pays the bills and keeps us going) to travel deals, travel news, travel alerts, you name it. We also want to hear from you — don’t be shy, ask us questions, tell us what you like or don’t like, and we’ll see what we can do to help you make the most of your next trip. Happy travels.

Turning one is a good time to reflect on the year that was, the year that will be. Here’s a motley mix of facts and figures about our blog. It’s been quite a year, and we fully expect Year 2 to be as fun, inspiring and interesting (possibly even controversial!) as the first one.

The Viator Travel Blog: Year One

Somehow we’ve managed to publish 434 posts. Many of these are actually quite useful and good!

The 5 most popular (based on page views) are:

• A first-hand report from Viator’s founder about opening day at the Grand Canyon Skywalk.
• Our list of the Top 25 Things to Do in Europe in 2006. Which reminds me, stay tuned for our 2007 lists of top things to do, including our list of the Top 50 things to do around the world.
• Kerrie’s post about the 2007 Cricket World Cup. She explained the game with grace and patience (useful for us Americans) and did a pretty decent job tipping the results, too.
• My post about 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. It struck a nerve, and generated a fair amount of controversy. My opinions have not changed.
• Our Insider’s Guide to Malaysia’s Best Beaches. Going to Malaysia? Read this post.

Our Spam Filter has deleted 17,663 comments! That’s a lot of Viagara links. My favorite spam comments:

• I do think your right on the spot here, i am going to bookmark your site to see if other people have different views.
• I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
• Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me

The 3 most popular search terms used to find our blog…

• rugby world cup predictions (thanks Ian for all your great Rugby World Cup posts)
• things to do in Europe (once again our list of Top 25 Things to Do in Europe in 2006)
• virgin first time (hmmm, was this post really what you were looking for??)

The 3 least popular search terms used to find our blog…

• belize it or not (no joke, 1 person found us using this term, hopefully they enjoyed our post)
• menstrual blood attracting sharks (yes, we really did blog about it)
• ancient 14 wonders of the world (silly us, we thought there were only 7)

Who are you people??? The top 5 home cities of our blog readers:

• London (cheers)
• Auckland (ta)
• Sydney (good on ya)
• New York City (thanks)
• Singapore & San Francisco (it’s a tie)

We have plenty of new ideas and plans for Year 2, so keep checking back over the next 12 months (or subscribe to our RSS feed and let your computer do all the heavy lifting). Thanks for your interest in the Viator Travel Blog, and let us know what else you’d like to see in the coming year.

–Scott McNeely