With just a few hours of 2011 remaining in Mountain View, Calif., we’re taking our traditional look at the past year on the Official Google Blog, as well as Google’s presence on Google+ and Twitter. On the blog this year, we published 471 posts (including this one)—17 more than 2010. Those posts were read by nearly 20 million people; we had 19,905,679 unique visitors between January 1 and December 31. We find a few themes in the most popular posts: Google+ was a favorite topic, as well as greater focus and simplicity across Google, and search quality. The top 10 posts are: Ten years later – 1,731,280 unique pageviews. Our post for the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 recognized a few online spaces for remembering the day. (This post was linked from google.com.) Introducing the Google+ project: real-life sharing, rethought for the web – 909,537 unique pageviews. In June, we launched Google+ to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it – 538,764 unique pageviews. We posted about how our experiments determined that Bing was using Google web search results. Supercharging Android: Google to acquire Motorola Mobility – 431,366 unique pageviews. In August we announced an agreement to acquire Motorola. Evolving the Google design and experience – 352,254 unique pageviews. We began to bring greater consistency to the Google experience, revamping first the homepage, then Gmail and more . Games in Google+: fun that fits your schedule – 265,995 unique pageviews. Less than two months after we launched the Google+ project, we brought games to the platform. More wood behind fewer arrows – 310,912 unique pageviews. As part of the process of prioritizing our product efforts, we announced the winding down of Google Labs. Advanced sign-in security for your Google account – 281,385 unique pageviews. It’s not often we can say that a post about online security is one of the top posts of the year. 2-step verification, an opt-in feature that helps verify that you’re the real owner of your account, was an exception. Google+ Pages: connect with all the things you care about – 237,467 unique pageviews. The third most popular Google+ post on the blog was about pages for brands and businesses to connect with people on Google+. Finding more high-quality sites in search – 258,974 unique pageviews. A major change to our ranking algorithm, known as Panda , is aimed at helping people find even higher quality in our search results. Other popular posts included the announcement that Larry Page was becoming CEO , a project to help Egyptians communicate during the January protests , Google+ updates and +1 news , a keeping your information safe from phishing campaigns , patents and Android ,