5ever: Five Years for the Filipino Historian

Five years of history to the Philippines and the world

"Donna tsurai sekai no yami no naka de sae kitto anata wa kagayaite koeru mirai no hate yowasa yue ni tamashii kowasarenu you ni my way kasanaru yo ima futari ni God bless."

(from God Knows)

On December 15, 2017, this history blog commemorates its fifth anniversary. To help spread the good news and celebrate the momentous occasion, use the hashtag #FilipinoHistorian and join the extended celebration via Facebook. In popular culture, 5ever means beyond forever. Indeed, the path taken had not been the easiest in the world, but we continue to move forward beyond forever, showing the world that as we forge on, the best is yet to come. Therefore, the humbled author takes this rare opportunity to express the deepest gratitude to all who have read and shared this simple history blog. Witness and share what we have achieved together!

Readers

As it stands, history is one of the disciplines garnering less attention in the Philippines. In addition, there are more popular, although less detailed and more trivialized, websites dabbling with the same field. Among them would be Indio Bravo (ranked 1 among Filipino history blogs as of 2017), and Views from the Pampang (ranked 2). While the Filipino Historian has a lot of catching up to do (marami pang kakaining bigas), it continues to gain as it publishes its 100th article this year.

This is what the blog looks like this year (2017)

As of December 2016, the blog had exceeded 50,000 views. This means a monthly average of 1,042 and an average of 34.2 views each day. Of course, this may seem a small feat in the world wide web, and it may well be so. Last year's projections for this history blog were pretty modest as well: 75,000 views by 2017, and 100,000 views by 2018. However, as the blog continues to generate traffic, it is ranked 5th among local blogs (according to Blogtopsites), and 3rd among Filipino history blogs (according to Top Blogs Philippines) as of 2017. In addition, SimilarWeb ranked it in the upper 0.1% of active websites in terms of popularity as of 2017. To top these off, the blog has exceeded all expectations. To date, it has exceeded 130,000 views, causing the author to modify his 2018 projection to 150,000. This means a monthly average of 2,214 and an average of 72.8 views each day - double than 2016 figures. May a hundred articles be, may a million readers see!

Recognition
When the history blog began on December 15, 2012, the eve of the "end of the world" (supposedly according to the Mayans), it has been beyond the author to appear on major television/radio networks. Yet, as we reach our fifth year, the author has begun to be seen in and be heard at various networks such as DZUP 1602, TV5, UNTV 37, and GMA 7, among others. As he went on with these opportunities, he is becoming recognized as the nation's "youngest historian." While the veracity of this moniker is yet to be proven, what is important for the author is to continually serve the nation and the world through this discipline. Watch one of his interviews at GMA 7 via YouTube.

Rankings

Speaking of rankings, this blog began from rock bottom. That is, level zero. However, as the audience continued to grow and traffic crawled upward, it was seen necessary to track how this blog fared out there. Therefore, by 2015, the author has installed tools from Blogtopsites (a ranking website since 2004) and Top Blogs Philippines (a ranking website since 2006) to fulfill this purpose. These ranking websites feature thousands of blogs and have been doing their respective functions for a number of years. This is how this history blog ranked from 2015 to 2017.

Filipino Historian averaged 48 (as of 2016) and 26 (as of 2017) in the rankings.
The nearer the value is to 1, the better it performs in the ranks.

From January to December 2016, the average ranking stood at 47.5 overall. Meanwhile, from January to December 2017, the average ranking rose to 26.1 overall. This is a 45% improvement. The ranking is nearer to 1, the better. At least based on these metrics, this solidifies the blog's position among the top 50 blogs out of thousands tracked (around 4,800 for Top Blogs Philippines and around 10,000 for Blogtopsites). It also shows that despite being less established, it proved to be a rising star among blogs in the Philippines and the world. Still, this shows that there is more work to be done.

In November 2017, ASEAN UP evaluated more than 130 Filipino blogs to come out with a list of top 50 blogs in the Philippines. Unfortunately, the Filipino Historian is not included in them. For reference and comparison, the rankings mainly involved a mix of SimilarWeb rankings, Moz rankings (an equivalent of Google PageRank), and social media following (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). However, if we are to base on Moz rankings only for instance (which quantifies the site's "raw" popularity in a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 as the highest), then this history blog can compare with the top 50 blogs listed by ASEAN UP. To illustrate:

Top 1-10 (according to ASEAN UP, from left to right): Yugatech (5.09), WhenInManila (6.55), LionhearTV (6.26), Naldz Graphics (6.13), Travelbook.ph (4.72), The Poor Traveler (6.65), Thirsty Thought by Kryz Uy (5.45), Pinoy Money Talk (4.78), Pinoy Adventurista (5.45), Unbox.ph (4.8)

Top 11-20 (according to ASEAN UP, from left to right): Two Monkeys Travel (5.59), Our Awesome Planet (6.61), The Pinay Solo Bakcpacker (5.8), The Macho Mom by Kikay Sikat (4.35), Camille Tries To Blog by Camille Co (5.29), Love, A (3.89), Pinoy Fitness (5.46), I Am Aileen (5.41), DG Manila (5.53), Dear Kitty Kittie Kath (4.57)

On average, the top 10 blogs in the Philippines have a Moz rank of 5.58. If extended to include all the top 20 blogs, the average Moz rank is 5.42. It can be observed that no history blog actually entered ASEAN UP's top 50, which just proves that history, or any related discipline, is yet to gain nationwide recognition. Even the closest competition of this history blog, the Indio Bravo (4.07), and Views from the Pampang (4.12), are not included in the list. How about the Filipino Historian? It has a Moz rank of 5.48, which can actually trumps over 12 of the top 20 blogs listed by ASEAN UP. This is not to lay doubt to the methodology of ASEAN UP, or any other ranking sites available. However, while it is indeed recognized that history is not a very popular discipline in the Philippines, it has to be acknowledged that one history blog is making strides to share it freely to our people.

Social media

One key factor in the growth of any website is the utilization of social media to convey your message. The Young Filipino Historian's foray to the social network happened on October 29, 2014, when the official Facebook page was launched. Ever since, the page has exceeded 2,000 followers. This represented an average growth of 13% every month (as of 2017).

Facebook page as of 2017

Statistics provided for this blog show that Facebook is the largest referring site for this blog. From 31% in December 2016, views from Facebook amounted to 51% as of December 2017. Google followed with 8.8% (up from 5.3% last year), then Wikipedia with 0.2% (down from 0.5% last year). Of course, this begins to become a rising issue because while there have been efforts to diversify audience sources, Facebook continues to have a large share among them. Meanwhile, statistics provided by Facebook show that from 250,000 impressions as of December 2016, but the Filipino Historian has achieved the "one million miracles" campaign earlier than expected. It has reached 1,250,000 people through Facebook and Twitter as of December 2017. While seemingly modest in the context of the internet, it has exceeded projections for both 2017 and 2018, which are 500,000 and 1,000,000, respectively. This caused the author to adjust projections once more, launching on its anniversary yet another campaign for the betterment of history for the Philippines and the world. This new drive will be known as the "two million miracles," which aims to reach 2,000,000 people through social media by 2018.

Twitter page as of 2017

On October 27, 2015, the official Twitter page was launched. While it only had 5 followers in 2016, it has tripled to 16 followers this year. Yet, it remains to have an almost insignificant contribution in terms of directing traffic, which amounted to around 0.1% of the total. However, there are signs that this blog would have better performance in Twitter in the near future. For instance, some tweets began to be noticed by profiles such as Heneral Antonio Luna and HISTORY HIT. In sum, the author seeks to increase social media influence by 2018.

Philippines and the world

On June 1, 2015, after recognizing the fact that it was read in 35 nations worldwide since February, the author gave the title International to the blog. To date, this history blog is read in more than 90 nations besides the Philippines.

World map showing the internationalization of the blog as of 2016 (nations in blue)

Outside the Philippines (61.8%), most views come from the United States of America (15.7%), Canada (1.9%), Saudi Arabia (1.9%), Russia (1.9%), United Arab Emirates (1.4%), Australia (0.7%), and Germany (0.7%). Meanwhile, in terms of social media, most followers other than the Philippines (85.4%) come from the United States of America (4%), Saudi Arabia (1.4%), United Arab Emirates (1.1%), Canada (0.7%), and India (0.7%). On April 6, 2015, the author gave the title national to this blog for having reached Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. This is less than six months after the blog began tracking its national extent in November 2014. See the extent of the blog as of October 2017.

Popular history
Not all articles in this blog receive equal tomi, meisei, chikara. Also, not all articles stand alone. To date, this blog has published some 100 articles, and it is recommended to read them all. Nevertheless, the following is a list of the most popular articles and series this blog has published so far.

Articles (constitutes 17.8% of all views)
1. The coup that never was? Antonio Luna and the First Republic
2. Mutiny Philippines: Andres Novales and his attempt at empire
3. Nansha Conflict: Contending for Kalayaan Islands
4. Andres Bonifacio and the revolutionary legacy
5. Mutiny Philippines: The December Coup

Series (constitutes 21.8% of all views)
1. Mutiny Philippines (December Coup, January Mutiny, Andres Novales, Antonio Luna)
2. Alternative Parties in the Philippines
3. The First Evangelical Church in the Philippines (Part 1, Part 2, Final)
4. Minorities during Martial Law (Cordillera, Muslim, Lumad)
5. history-ph update (excluding the State of the Blog Address)

Who to thank for?
With all these accomplishments on the books, the real driver of any success is the team who worked together to achieve it. Who is this team? Our team is composed by each and every one of you. Yes, it is ultimately for the readers that the lone author of the Filipino Historian strives to write. What then is the composition of our foundation? With the help of statistics provided for the blog, we can have the least idea about it. In terms of gender, 72% were male and 28% were female. In terms of age, 2.7% are below 18 years old, 51.2% are 18 to 34 years old, 21.5% are 35 to 44 years old, 12.5% are 45 to 54 years old, 7% are 55 to 64 years old, and 4.5% are 65 years old above. It can be observed that there are only slight changes in these demographics. For all the readers and followers, the author would like to convey his utmost thanks. May you continue to patronize the Filipino Historian, the leading Filipino history blog. Let us make history together 5ever.

Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?

(Ecclesiastes 8:7)