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Saturday Spotlight: Top 10 Cookies

Julia M. Usher 1/30/2110:38 PM

Hi, everyone! I am starting this Spotlight in an unconventional way with a special mention and an explanation. Many of you have been wondering why a certain fabulous dragon cake (pictured below) has been in our "Top 10 Cookies" home page photo gallery, often in the top spot, for the last few weeks. Well, the easy answer is that every post on the site, be it a cookie or a cake (or a cupcake or a cake pop), has a chance to land in that photo feed. But, more importantly, that cake photo has amassed thousands of views, many more than any other clip on the site since January 1. And it continues to amass views at a rapid pace. So, special congrats to @The Woodsy Wife - Bethany Bonner for making such a statement with her cake!

Sleepy Dragon Cake by The Woodsy Wife

As crazy as it may seem that a cake (first posted to the site in May 2017) is at the top of a cookie site, our trending algorithms count all views equally, whether they be from members or from external sources. I welcome external traffic to the site, because it brings new members and gets more eyes on your lovely cookies! It also boosts Cookie Connection in Google rankings, which, in turn, continues the positive cycle of more people seeing the site and your lovely work.

Sometimes this external traffic is so huge that it can boost an older post to the very top of our site's Top 10 gallery, as we're seeing now. (We also saw this phenomenon around Christmastime with some older holiday cookie posts). This current case is also a great example of the power of social media sharing. Back on January 1, a Facebook page by the name of The Forest Parlour made a post featuring fairy cakes from various sources, and The Woodsy Wife's cake was featured along with a link back to this site. Since then, The Forest Parlour's post has garnered 7,800 comments and been shared upwards of 48,000 times! Many of those viewers then clicked through and visited The Woodsy Wife's post here on Cookie Connection. All this to say: Let this be a challenge to you to create the next amazing cookie (or cake!) that takes down the internet! Of course, congrats again to The Woodsy Wife.

Referrals to this post remain quite high, as The Forest Parlour's post continues to get shared, but I suspect they will subside in a week or so. (Sadly, social media has cultivated short attention spans, and all good things there inevitably come to an end.)

Now, let's turn to this week's hot list*, which is focused solely on our top-trending cookies, as always. More special congrats are in order. First, to @Wendy Cubic for earning the coveted cover spot with her perfectly piped snowflakes, and, second, to at least four newcomers to the Spotlight: @Reina Tranquility, @Susanna Josina, @Wypiekane Opowieści, and @Twila. (My apologies if I missed anyone, but I've been doing these Spotlights for what seem eons, and this old mind occasionally loses track!)

#1: Victorian-Style Cookies by Reina Tranquility

#2: Lace Heart by Tina at Sugar Wishes

#3: Love Is in the Air - Suspended Stringwork by Susanna Josina [EDITOR'S NOTE: These cookies are one of three impressive early Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #44 entries that hit this Spotlight. Check out the other two below by @Petra Florean and @Megan Britt, and consider entering yourself! There's still plenty of time, and these challenges are a great way to stretch skills.]

#4: Fancy Feet Collection by The Vintage Cookie Jar

#5: Winter Blues - View #1 by Wendy Cubic

#6: Seven Centimeters of Sweet Cat by Wypiekane Opowieści

#7: Pingüinos Enamorados by carolina santiago

#8: Colorful Stringwork by Megan Britt

#9: Romance by Petra Florean

And, a set expressing a wonderful sentiment (what better way to close this post?!) . . .

#10: Love Letters by Twila

Congrats again to everyone on this hot list, as well as to The Woodsy Wife! I leave you now with one housekeeping note. I will be teaching Zoom classes next weekend, and, if I've learned one thing from this new normal of teaching, it's that I can't handle anything but class on teaching weekends! That being said, there will be no Spotlight next weekend (February 6), but I plan to resume them on February 13. 'Til then, go for all the social media shares you can get!

* As a reminder, a word about how the rankings are determined: The rankings are not at all subjective. In fact, they are determined essentially by you, our members, and the activity (number of views, likes, and comments) you've bestowed on each photo. The site uses a top-secret algorithm that weighs these various factors to determine which photos are trending most quickly (i.e., are the "hottest") over specified periods of time. As such, the hot list at the time of this announcement may look a little different a few hours or a day from now as more photos are added to the site.

So that no one has an unfair advantage in making it onto a hot list, the algorithm is secret even to site administrators. Only our platform developers know the code, which has been exhaustively tested by those developers and Cookie Connection staff.

All photos shown here are the courtesy (and copyright) of the designers listed.

To check out our other hot lists, at any time of day, visit our Hot Spot, also found in the site's main navigation line.