Now that 2011 is officially in the books, I wanted to take a few minutes to thank each and every one of you for your readership.

2011 was a great year for our humble site, and we’re looking forward to an even better 2012.

Overall, we saw a 59% increase in traffic for 2011 (over 2010). And, if you look specifically at the August thru December timeframe (our busiest time of year), we saw an incredible 75% increase in traffic.

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of our visitors come from the US. But, there is a small and loyal contingent from the UK and Canada. Overall, in 2011, we had noticeable amounts of visitors from 40 different countries, a number that balloons to 100 countries if we’re counting EVERY country that had at least one visitor.

Within the US, WV leads the pack in terms of sheer number of visitors from each state. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina round out the top 5. Florida, New York, Georgia, Washington DC and Texas make up the rest of the top 10. It’ll be interesting to see if/how these rankings change once we’re in the Big 12.

Additionally, we received significant amounts of traffic from EVERY state – Maine to California, Alaska to Louisiana. Mountaineer Nation truly stretches from coast to coast.

If we look at which cities sent us the most traffic, it’s no surprise that Morgantown is at the top of the list, but our top 10 includes Washington DC, New York City, Chicago and Pittsburgh. Our top 20 includes Houston, Columbus, Charlotte and Richmond.

In terms of “technology”, IE was (by far) the most popular browser, followed by Safari and Firefox. The iPhone is the most popular mobile device used to access the site, followed by the iPad, HTC EVO 4G and the iPod Touch.

Ironically, the most searched for phrase that brought traffic to our site was “wvu to sec.” Other popular search phrases were “conference realignment”, “wvu to big 12″ and, strangely, “bob huggins house.”

Facebook has been pretty good to us throughout the year, but so has wemustignitethiscouch.com and rivals.com.

I could go on and on with the details of our far-flung and diverse visitor base, but I think the above info does a good job of showing how our site has grown. It’s truly a labor of love.

So, cheers and thanks for the great year. But, be sure to buckle up – 2012 is shaping up to be a huge year… for WVU and for us!