2005 is rapidly coming to an end, which means it’s time to look back on the year. Personally, the biggest milestones were getting engaged and then married. I’ve also made a few national media appearances and published several freelance pieces, at least partly owing to the notoriety from the blog.

The site became a GoogleNews contributor, was in the Blogometer Spotlight at the Hotline, and crossed the 3, 4 and 5 million unique visits barriers as tracked by SiteMeter.

Statswise, we had 4.7 million unique visits, 12 million page views and 38.9 million hits for the year according to my site host’s stats:

This compares to 2.4 million unique visits, over 5 million page views, and over 17 million hits in 2004.

According to the less accurate but more universal SiteMeter:

The following blogs referred the most traffic to OTB in 2005:

Wizbang 30,000+
Michelle Malkin ~30,000
InstaPundit18,000+
Wonkette ~15,000
Eschaton 12,000+
ScrappleFace 11,000+
Daou Report 8000+
Fark (and related sites) 7500+
One Hand Clapping 7000+
Political Wire 7000+
INDC Journal 7000+
VodkaPundit 6500+
PoliBlog 5500+
small dead animals 5500+
Lucianne 5000+
The Jawa Report ~5000
Crooks and Liars 4000+
Hugh Hewitt ~4000
Gay Orbit 3500+
Accidental Verbosity 3000+
Political Animal 3000+
The Hedgehog Report 3000+
Q & O 3000+
Betsy’s Page 3000+
Signifying Nothing ~3000
Military Outpost/The Indepundit 2000+
Rooftop Report 2000+
Intel Dump ~2000
Dean’s World 1500+
Ace of Spades HQ 1500+
Musings from Brian J. Noggle 1500+
Captain’s Quarters 1500+
bRight & Early 1500+
Winds of Change 1500+
Asymmetrical Information 1500+
Professor Bainbridge 1000+
Tim Blair
Obsidian Wings 1000+
Blogs for Bush 1000+
The Corner on NRO 1000+
Yippee-Ki-Yay! 1000+
Arguing with Signposts 1000+

As always, thanks to all who visit, comment, and link.

The site’s a lot of work but I’ve had a good time with it over the nearly three years it’s been running.

Related:

OTB: 2004 Year in Review
ONE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY (the closest thing to a 2003 review that I had)