In Third Person

I love analytics. As someone who works in the online advertising industry, I find the process of analyzing numbers and deriving insights from those numbers to be very interesting. Although WordPress.com has a very limited analytics dashboard, I still check the numbers multiple times a day to see how everything is doing.

For the fun of it, I thought I’d write a mini-report of sorts to share with you some of the insights I’ve gathered about you and those who frequent this site. I sort of did this about a year ago, but I thought it’d be fun to try and make a persona model of you, the In Third Person reader. I understand that you’re all unique people, but the purpose of this exercise is to try and boil you down into one main archetype based on the numbers I have available to me. How does this match up to you?

You initially found my blog through a search engine

Roughly 2/3 of In Third Person’s daily traffic comes from people finding the site through a search engine. Odds are, you were looking for something specific that one of the major gaming sites didn’t cover to your satisfaction, and In Third Person was there in your Google search results to save the day. I wish that more of you who found the site through Google stuck with me, but I’m grateful for the loyal readership I do have and will continue to make In Third Person better for anyone interested in video games.

You like fighting games

Fighting games are consistently near the top of the most popular search terms list and the most viewed posts on In Third Person. This is very convenient for me, as I too, am a huge fighting game fan and I love to write about all aspects of them.

I think that the popularity of fighting game content on In Third Person stems from a number of different factors. Ever since the release of Street Fighter IV, the entire scene has grown bigger than ever. There’s a lot of people that want to know everything there is to know about Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat and BlazBlue, just to name a few. Even though BlazBlue is a relatively niche fighting game series in relation to some of the scene’s current heavy-hitters, all of In Third Person’s BlazBlue posts have performed relatively well.

Besides the fact that there’s an audience for fighting game content, there’s also a lack of fighting game related content being created by the major gaming websites. Fighting games in their current state aren’t the biggest priority for sites like IGN or Gamespot, so people turn to Google and find In Third Person. Sure, there’s awesome sites like Shoryuken.com and TekkenZaibatsu.com that have the hardest of hardcore fighting game content, but casual fighting game fans wouldn’t know to look there. My fighting game content just so happens to pop up on Google a lot, which brings in a more casual fighting game audience, which is very cool. Regardless of how serious you are about fighting games, I hope my fighting game content continues to appeal to you.

You’re really interested in fightsticks

Before I bought my first fightstick last year, I did a ton of research online in order to educate myself on the matter. Buying a fightstick can be a very expensive investment, and you want to make sure you’re getting the right one with your hard-earned cash. A year later, I see through the In Third Person numbers that I’m not alone in my quest for fightstick knowledge.

Over the past year or so, I’ve owned seven fightsticks, broken three of them, and most recently fixed one of them. Along the way, I’ve written a number of posts sharing what I’ve learned about fightsticks, which In Third Person readers have read in droves. I’m assuming you’re turning to this site for fightstick information just as I turned to other sites when I was in the process of researching fightsticks for purchase. If you’ve used one of my posts to help you buy a fightstick, I hope you’re happy with your investment!

You really don’t care about the 3DS

If In Third Person wasn’t a passion project of mine first, I probably would have stopped writing about the Nintendo 3DS a while ago. Even though I’ve written a number of posts about the 3DS, the search numbers and post view numbers are pathetic. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that In Third Person readers don’t care about it, as Nintendo 3DS sales have been awful and Nintendo was forced to drop the price dramatically after only a few months. I’ll still write about it because I’m a 3DS owner and I care, but I’ll do it knowing that you’ll probably skip them all to read posts about my next point.

You have the hots for Mass Effect 2’s Miranda Lawson

Come on now. Don’t be shy. I romanced her as well when I played through Mass Effect 2. This space babe who was genetically designed to be hot brings in a lot of people to In Third Person. Almost every post I’ve written that mentions her or has her name tagged to it does surprisingly well. Even my joke list of video game characters worth dating if they existed in real life (which mentions Miranda, though she isn’t on the list) is one of the most viewed posts of all-time on In Third Person off the strength of her being mentioned. I also have the numbers to show that there are people that find my site by using search terms like “mass effect 2 miranda sexy”, “mass effect 2 miranda hot” and “miranda cosplay”. Let me help you out with that last one. You’re welcome. I’m not here to judge what you’re looking for, but I’m glad you’re looking here.

With that said, Miranda is still only the second most popular video game character as far as search terms. Who then is the #1 most searched for character? Captain Price of Call of Duty fame. If you’re on In Third Person looking for sexy pictures of him, I won’t judge you for that, either.

Rock Band 3’s career mode really confuses you

Rock Band 3 was an awesome game on a number of fronts. One thing it stumbled on though, was its Career Mode. As a means of tailoring the Career Mode to work in a manner that better suits the way most people play Rock Band, they streamlined Career Mode to the point where you could beat it without ever actually accessing the Road Challenges, which sort of replaces the traditional Career Mode. I think this was lost on a number of players, as ‘rock band 3 career mode’ is a surprisingly popular search term to this day on In Third Person and the post I wrote a post about this continues to bring people in.

You really like Advance Wars

Most of the time, my posts about older and retro games fall on deaf ears. Readers looking for video game content are mostly concerned with what’s happening right now. With that said, Advance Wars is the second most popular search term on In Third Person of all-time. My one Advance Wars post has been a huge beneficiary of that, as that post is also one of the most viewed posts of all-time on In Third Person.

Advance Wars is a fantastic game, and I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in my love for it. If you haven’t played any of the Advance Wars games, I’d recommend that you give at least one of them a shot.

You really want to know who Daigo Umehara’s girlfriend is

One of the most bizarre stats I’ve noticed these past few months is that the site attracts an unusually large amount of people who want to know about Street Fighter legend Daigo Umahara‘s girlfriend. I can see why people would want to learn more about “The Beast”, as he’s one of the most accomplished professional gamers of all-time. But what do you want to know about Daigo’s significant other? I don’t even know if Daigo has a girlfriend. In either case, what does it matter to you?