50,000 is a big number, so I figured I'd document it here by letting you all know that this "story" is my 50,000th published story for the search industry. Yes, I've written 50,000 stories on search and on the search industry over the past almost 23 years.
To be clear, I've written 39,321 stories on this site, the Search Engine Roundtable. 9,544 on Search Engine Land where I am still active and 1,135 on Search Engine Watch where I have not published in like 20 years.
I originally thought it was 1,140 stories on SEW, but I think it's closer to 1,135. I hit 45,000 stories last August of 2024, by the way:
I officially hit over 45,000 articles on search topics between @seroundtable (34,973) @sengineland (9,142) and my early days at @sewatch (1,140) https://t.co/1sgjXPvJgb
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 2, 2024
This does not count all the social posts on X (Twitter), Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon and so on... This is just published stories on these three sites.
Just to give you an idea of what is involved, check out my weekly stats page (which is a new page that I have not announced yet). It shows how many blog posts I wrote over the past week, how many people commented on them, how many emails I've sent to readers, how many topics I manually reviewed, how many of those I completed (covered or put in my newsletter), how many pages I've tracked, how many of those pages changed and more. Here is a graph from this past week:
JR Oakes once analyzed the past 20 years of my writing - it was a cool look at the data behind knowing what I cover and when I cover it.
This does not include the thousands of websites I follow, the thousands of RSS feeds I go through daily, the countless online discussion forums I track and social media accounts I follow. I follow a lot, all to document changes in our industry in one place.
In about two months, I celebrate 23 years of my writing about search for the search industry. I will do my deep dive on the past year there, so stay tuned.
But for now, I just want to thank everyone who reads my stuff, watches my videos, and follows me on social. And more importantly, thanks to the amazing search industry, which is always sharing and so giving to its colleagues.
It's been an honor, and here is to hitting 100,000 stories in another 20 years!
Forum discussion at X.
