The most read Common Tread articles of 2022

First, while good writing and attractive photography are important, I recognize that quality matters more in earning audience loyalty than in racking up big readership numbers. The list of most read stories and my personal list of our best stories of the year are totally different. Anyway, the latter is subjective and the former is just by the numbers, so let's stick to the statistics for this discussion.

You might be surprised that it's not an in-depth motorcycle review that tops the list. Entrepreneurs will tell you — including the ones who founded RevZilla — that the way to success is identifying the customer's pain point and addressing it. At Common Tread, readers are our customers. Sometimes we'll post an article and our regular readers will react with something that sounds like, "Well, duh, everyone knows that." But we do those articles because we know from the stats that people are searching for that information. In many cases, those people are beginning riders or aspiring riders. It's important we serve them, as well as the experienced enthusiasts who are the main part of the Common Tread audience.

Keep that thought in mind as we go down the list and some of the stories you see at the top will begin to make more sense.

First, a few "honorable mentions" from 2022 that just missed the top 10. There was Zack Courts' test of the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 system, obviously new technology a lot of people are interested in. There was a report I asked Lemmy to write about how online motorcycle forums are drying up. And there was my report on reactions to the news that Harley-Davidson had ended production of Evo Sportsters. Now, on to the top 10.

10: It may surprise you that only two motorcycle reviews made the top 10, but it isn't surprising that one of them was the DesertX, Ducati's first serious adventure motorcycle. Spurgeon Dunbar took the choice assignment of flying to Sardinia to test the new Ducati.

9: A little more surprising is the other first ride review that made the list. The Kawasaki Z650RS costs just a little more than half what the DesertX lists for, and Andy Greaser's trip to Southern California to test ride it wasn't as exotic as Spurgeon's excursion, but apparently there was a lot of interest in the retro twin because it was the only other review to make the list.

8: Speaking of solving people's pain points, Ari Henning looked into the annoying problem of traffic lights that don't recognize that a motorcycle is waiting for the light to change. His article and accompanying video also gave readers some tips for what to do about it. It's actually the second time we've written about this issue, but it's obvious the problem hasn't gone away, because thousands of readers sought out the story and video for advice.

7: Grim news and controversy always draw attention, and Andy's report on the investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into two cases where Teslas on "Autopilot" killed motorcyclists drew lots of readers and comments.

6: The same goes for my story on the truck driver who was acquitted of charges in a 2019 crash that killed seven motorcyclists, mostly former Marines and their family members.

5: Back in May, after Suzuki announced it would pull out of MotoGP at the end of the 2022 season, the resulting comments led me to do some research and write an article I titled "Suzuki is not a motorcycle company and other facts." My purpose was to address what I felt were common misconceptions here in the United States. It was no secret Suzuki's U.S. market share had dwindled, the company was producing few new motorcycle models for us, and had stopped selling cars in the United States. As a result, many here thought Suzuki was on the ropes, but I pulled the numbers to show that Suzuki's global business was doing fine and how its U.S. revenues were just not that significant to the overall corporation. The article stirred a lot of comments and made our top five.

4: Now is when we get to some results that may surprise you. I'm sure some readers think we run our annual Gear Guide articles and videos solely as a strategy to boost sales. The reality is more complex. People are searching for information on motorcycle gear and RevZilla has the experts in house. Our "Best motorcycle Bluetooth 2022" Gear Guide wasn't just a shameless attempt to sell communicators. It was also about giving people the information they were searching for, as shown by the fact that it was our fourth most read article of 2022.

3: Speaking of pain points, gas prices spiked in the first half of the year. Performance and style, not economy, are usually the criteria by which motorcycles are judged. But it's pretty clear people were searching for different information back in the spring because Andy's story on the most fuel-efficient motorcycles in each category came in at number three for the year.

2: When a motorcycle manufacturer unveils a new model with wide interest, we'll write an article about the specifications and later, after we've had a chance to ride it, we'll post a review with our opinions on how it actually works. It's always been interesting to me that we often get more readers for the initial news report than we do for the more useful and in-depth ride review. That was the case this year when I wrote our first look article on the new Harley-Davidson Nightster, which got more readers than our ride review that came later. It also shows just how much Harley-Davidson is still the 800-pound gorilla in the U.S. motorcycle market, since the Evo Sportster and its replacement both got a mention in this article.

1: This will be anti-climactic to some of our readers, I'm sure, but our most read story of 2022 was: our annual Gear Guide to the best helmets of 2022. That's right. Not a tale of Andy fixing up a junk bike to run in the Reliability Rally or an article to go with a masterful video of our West Coast team riding tiddlers to the Arctic Circle or even one of my opinion pieces on where the U.S. motorcycle industry is going. No, none of that. Our best read story was about helmets, because a lot of people out there are looking for that information and see RevZilla as a source of expertise.

We'll keep writing all those other stories, both because we want to tell them and we know you want to read them. Numbers are only a small part of the picture and we have always focused on building an audience and a community of readers, not chasing one-time clicks from people who may never think of Common Tread again. But I hope this list gives you a little insight into what brings readers into Common Tread.