Top Ten New Reviews of 2025

The most popular page on the blog this year (besides the search page), was the January announcement about all the 2025 Ben & Jerry's stuff that was coming out. There's also a surprising amount of hits on old posts. There are always some, but with the new stuff getting less hits, it means the older stuff shows up on all the reports. Overall traffic is down ofcourse (like it is every year). Alright, let's start the countdown!

Top Ten Reviews of 2024

Hello! Another year is in the books as the blog crawls it's way to it's 17th anniversary in early May. The most viewed review of 2024 was actually my Cool Dog review from 2012, and that's due to Ayo Edebiri mentioning them to Seth Meyers this summer. That old review actually has more views than the top ten 2024 reviews combined! 

Anyway.....   so this is my first year using the new analytics to compile the top ten list of the most viewed new reviews. It's been a bit of a learning curve, but here goes.

Top Ten Reviews of 2023 & Other Stuff

It's that time of year again. Boy did 2023 go fast. So I went to gather the stats for 2023 when I realized that I never added the new Google Analytics 4 tag to the theme. In other words, no analytics for 2023.,, Whoops! Thankfully, Blogger has some basic stats which should be good enough to get us a top ten list (I prefer the more accurate analytics version, but it is what it is). Oh, we'll talk about why the blog looks different two, but first the list after the break!

Who will be this year's winner?

Top Ten New Reviews of 2022

 And just like that, another year ends... am I glad it's ending? honestly? Yes, quite. I felt like 2022 was repeatedly trying to test me. No, I'm not having a mid-life crisis, but I do feel like I am in the mid-life funk where everything is changing and the world kind of wants to test various aspects of what I take for granted. There were some big highs and some sad lows, but this is an ice cream blog, so let's get to it!

Top Ten New Reviews of 2022

Top Ten New Reviews of 2021

It's been kind of a rough year hasn't it? 2021 was supposed to be better than 2020, and it some ways it was, but in many ways it wasn't. Anyway... as expected, blog traffic is down another 20%+ as people move to more doom-scrolling-friendly platforms. In unexpected news, Instagram decided that I was no longer worthy of their love and has relegated me to the non-viral bin. Something happened in early June and since then it has been near impossible for me to get any of my posts seen by non-followers... in fact, many posts don't even get seen by my followers. Fun times....  but let's get to the top ten list which thankfully has a clear cut winner.

Top Ten Posts of 2020

It's been quite the year hasn't it? With 80% of it spent in quarantine, my ability to find new stuff and post about it has been severely hampered. In peak OSS days, Nick and I could have reviewed over 200 products. This year? ...wow, 80 products reviewed actually. Ok, so not totally terrible (note: a few of those products appear on a single post). A quick tip of the cap to those companies that helped supply any of those reviews, it was definitely a help with my regular routine thrown in to such disarray. Ok, should we jump to it then?

Top Ten Posts of 2019

Merry Christmas Y'all! Your gift is a post that I made just for you. Yes, it's that time of year.... where I ask myself why do I still do this? Ahhh, sorry, but tabulating these numbers is kind of depressing. Traffic is down another 25% and I think that's ok if that makes me sad. It is what it is. Not looking for sympathy, this isn't an actual burdensome issue, I will just always regret zigging instead of zagging over the years. As a human, I can't help but be a little jealous of people who've had better luck at this stuff... and if I hear about that youtube kid that made 26 million dollars again... Oh well, enough whining, let the countdown begin.

Top Ten Reviews of 2018

Hello peoples who still visit the blog! Hehehehe. Yes, readership declined another 20+ percent here on ye olde blogging platform this year. Instagram continues to be the hot thing right now and it has it's own top nine thing, but I'm here to talk about where people landed when they get here. The tough part is that with less traffic, the difference between each spot can get pretty small. There's less than a 25% difference between the #1 spot and the #10 spot (back in the day the difference could be double or triple).

Top Ten New Reviews of 2017

Hey everyone! We've already covered that sugar replacement is hottest topic on the blog (despite not actually reviewing it), and we've covered what's least trendy on the blog. Now, FINALLY, we'll cover the top ten new reviews of 2017. Are you ready?

Least Viewed Reviews of 2017

I like doing the top ten most viewed reviews list every year because it's both interesting and easy to compile. Doing the top ten least viewed reviews requires a bit more effort, but I did sit down and manage to get a list out of google analytics, but I'm not sure a direct list is the best way to describe what I am seeing, so let's do things a little differently.

The first big surprise was finding all of my Perry's reviews in the bottom 25% of the 2017 reviews and taking up 3 of the 10 bottom spots. On one hand, this seems unfair because they make fun flavors. On the other hand, they are just a small company out of Buffalo and so their appeal to most of you is very limited.

Not surprising is finding all but one of my local Cumberland Farms reviews in the bottom 20 reviews. Again, we are struck by limited interest because of limited exposure. Thankfully for them, their flavors and packaging make for catchy instagram photos. (if you are curious, it was the Toasty S'mores review that did best)

The next big surprise is finding my Baskin-Robbins reviews near the bottom of the list. Not a single review breaks in to the top half of reviews and the worst one clocks at #10 on the least viewed list. It figures that the one involving Reese's was the most viewed of the bunch. I know this is a freezer aisle blog but ouch...  apparently I should stick to DQ reviews which do way better.

The last surprise was how badly my fast food shake reviews do. The Hardee's Milkshake review clocks in as the worst review of the year. Maybe there's just too much online competition for things like the BK cereal shakes and such? The Arby's Cookie Butter Shake, while disappointing, made the best showing yet still didn't break in to the top 50 reviews.

The rest of the list is basically just low end or limited availability stuff, but at this point, I think you get the idea of what the stats say. I also don't want to dig too deep and bore everyone. Now, ofcourse stats aren't everything. Just because my review hasn't been seen a ton doesn't mean the product isn't popular, this is all about recapping my reviews that were actually opened in someone's web browser. We might need to factor in frequency as well. Maybe if I had done 6-8 Baskin-Robbins reviews instead of 4, maybe Google would rank my reviews higher and I would get more traffic for them overall. For example, I do lots of B&J's reviews so I get lots of B&J's traffic.

Ok, your turn to chime in. Do you find this list amusing? Do you think something is missing from it? I just had the crazy idea to re-examine this list from a flavor perspective but that will have to wait until another night. Leave your thoughts in the comments and have a nice weekend!

Top Ten New Reviews of 2016

Can you believe 2016 is over? or better yet, are you glad it's over? As you get older, the years go by faster and faster, and this one was a blur. It was also a challenging year logistically as all the companies dumped their products at once and that was after I had vowed to myself not to spend a fortune buying the latest and greatest just for the sake of a few extra page views. Ice cream hunting is fun, but spending an extra 40% to review it first has lost a bit lot of luster for me... look, I'm sidetracking already, let's get to the countdown!

Top Ten Frozen Reviews of 2015

Time to wrap up 2015 and get ready for 2016, though technically there is a slight hiccup. In prior years, I would make one giant "freezer guide" for the year and while useful, it's didn't get a ton of traffic. For 2015, I did individual guides which caught an enormous amount of traffic (and thankfully redirected some of it to the individual reviews).

So, in the interest of full disclosure, let me tell you this. Our #1 overall post was for the new Talenti flavors with a huge margin over anything else. Our #3 post was for the new Haagen-Dazs flavors. If you are curious, the new Edy's frozen custard guide clocked in at #9. Now with all that said, guess who's going to have a firm grip of the top of the review countdown? (and still easily leads the blog with overall page views) Guesses ready? Alrighty, let's go!

Top Ten Most Popular Reviews of 2014

Hello ice cream nation!! I was going to try and shove in one more review this year, but getting a new scoopmobile has really kept me busy these last few days. That's right, after driving my car (almost) to the moon (when it's closest anyway), I finally traded it in. It's pretty weird driving something else after 12 years, but when a rusty car starts needing a bunch of repairs, well, you move on if you can.

So let's do a recap like a lot of other sites are doing right now. Let's start with the ten most popular reviews of 2014. Before starting though, I'd like to put in an honorable mention for #11 because it has gotten more comments than any other review... and they're all angry. That's right, Nick's showdown between Ben & Jerry's Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch & the old Coffee Heath Bar Crunch has gotten people so very riled up. Not a single person has come to the defense of the new non-GMO version. We haven't seen this much angst since B&J Creme Bruleee was cancelled. (Ironically B&J says this was their #7 most popular flavor this year... but maybe that was from sales of people buying up all the old pints). Anyway, on to the countdown!

Top Ten Most Popular Reviews of 2013

Based on bloggers built in tracking, these are the top ten eleven reviews that have picked up the most traffic. If you want, try to guess a few before clicking ahead.

#11 McDonald's Pralines & Cream McFlurry
McD's broke into the top ten... until I double checked my list and realized it's actually #11. Oops. Maybe next year one of the big fast food chains (besides DQ) can break in to our top ten list.

#10 Retiring Ben & Jerry's Creme Brulee
Man are people super upset about this flavor retiring. Traffic on this post beat out several of the new 2013 B&J flavors.

#9 DQ Lemon Meringue Pie Blizzard (July BotM)
I'm hoping everyone that read this post avoided this particular blizzard

Top Ten Most Popular Reviews of 2012

Hard to believe it's the final day of 2012. It's been a crazy year that has gone faster than all the years before that. I know, that's just part of getting older, but time really seems to go faster when you have an ever growing list of things to worry about.

Now I haven't tried this before, but I think we need to count down the top ten posts of 2012. This isn't necessarily my top ten favorite products of 2012, but I will admit that #1 is near and dear to my heart gut. If you want, take a second to think of a few things that might be on the list... ok, ready? let's go!

2012 Review Countdown

#10 Breyers BLASTS! Golden Oreo
To my surprise, Breyers BLASTS Golden Oreo starts off our countdown. I'm not a huge fan of frozen dairy dessert, but you have to admire Breyers tenacity with this product line. They've got the pedal to the metal and it should be interesting to see what new flavors might arrive in 2013 (we may even have one of them sooner than you think!)