Teachers’ Online Search Trends

What are teachers searching for online?

For over 15 years, I’ve been sharing my thoughts on education on this site, and thanks to readers across the globe, it has significantly enhanced my pedagogy, developed a big community, and helped many other teachers.

I have to admit that my energy for blogging is mixed, yet it is such a deeply ingrained habit that I cannot stop myself from writing! This could be due to the changing nature of social media, plus having a very popular website. I have been locking down some blog posts because automated RSS feeds copy and paste all my hard work, re-share my material, and then sell it on!

As a result, I’ve gone through all the highs and lows and changed rhythms according to my workload and interests.

For dedicated readers, many will have observed how the original blog has shifted from my own classroom practice, to controversial topics on curriculum and assessment policy. This also includes English education politics and, most recently, the world of neuroeducation. Blogging once or twice a week, reaching one or two blogs per day at a peak time prior to the pandemic!

Recent challenges have meant that blogging once or twice a week is sufficient to meet my habits and keep content flowing through the site. Teachers reassure me on my travels that despite a crowded market, they are reading the material, and occasionally, one or two significantly help!

As we reach the end of another academic year, I would usually write about my teaching and learning highlights, but there are far too many to document. To gain a quick snapshot, this link provides everything in one place. Instead, what I’d like to offer is a glimpse behind the scenes and a look underneath the @TeacherToolkit engine room!

A look behind-the-scenes

Google Analytics provides a very deep insight into how people use a website. Below is a screenshot of how people have used my site over the last 12 months.

• 414,000 people visited the site. Collectively, they did 6.2 million different (engaged) things!
• Over 342,000 people are “engaged” and visited 2.5 pages each.
• The average engagement time is 74 seconds, up by two seconds!
• Event count is defined by clicks, page scrolls, video views etc
• Approaching 20 million page views, by 9 million people!!

• The dips (in the blue line) represent the weekend when teachers log off!
• You can also spot Christmas and summer (off-peak seasons)
• The biggest spikes are in October and June; my busiest teacher training periods

What are teachers searching for?

I still believe I overshare on social media, and every time I look at the following graphic, I realise that there is so much footprint across the site – 3,000 blog posts represent 3,000 landing pages – I don’t need to share on social media as much as I believe I need to.

You can see clearly that the vast majority of traffic comes from a) people searching for teaching material and accessing the site or b) Google search engine optimisation places the content on the first page of people’s search entries – see this questioning example.

• The largest audience remains to be teachers in the United Kingdom; approximately 68% of traffic.
• The USA and Australia are the next biggest audiences – yet to reach North Korea!
• Direct traffic is when someone clicks a bookmark or copy and paste a URL into their browser.

I could go on, but that’s enough for now. I’ll stop blogging when I’ve had enough or you tell me otherwise. In the meantime, it’s brilliant therapy for the soul, and for my pedagogical wisdom.

Thank you for reading.