Site Statistics for 2012

Webmaster

The real test for the year was to see how the Newsletter Blog fitted with the main web site over a full year. Prior to September 2011 I had run a newsletter as part of the main site, but the ten year old software I was using didn't have the facilities I needed to link in easily with the latest developments in social networks. The following summary of statistics compares the number of visitors to the main web site, and the number of page views on the Newsletter blog.

	Visitors to Main Site				Newsletter Views
	2009	2010	2011	2012	2011	2012
January		20790	19669	25566		2907
February		19005	19745	24389		2870
March		21575	20029	29721		4028
April		18233	18546	22384		4399
May		19320	20058	21241		4112
June		17460	19025	19750		4005
July		18298	18964	19729		3873
August	13652	19262	18499	20270		4630
September	21174	19677	19520	20041	868	4772
November	21685	20436	20670	21645	1358	5790
December	16879	15513	20091	20401	2357	5373
TOTAL	-	230063	235770	258339	-	54799

Interpreting the statistics is difficult for many reasons, and as much of the traffic comes from Google changes in the significant changes in how Google works can have an effect. (I get the impression I now get more interested visitors and less "quickly passing through" traffic in recent years.) I don't have any detailed figures back to the old Hertfordshire Genealogy bulletin board in 1998, but it is clear that visitor numbers have been steadily increasing over the years. A check of the newsletters on some old security dump copies of the web site revealed that in September 2001 I celebrated getting a total of 10,000 visitors in the first 5 months of the web site after the move from the bulletin board format. In 2006 I celebrated getting 10000 views in one month for the first time.

It is clear that the Newsletter has been one of successful growth, and it is likely that in 2013 it will regularly be getting 5000 page views a month  - perhaps even hitting 200 in a day on a pretty regular basis. On the other hand being on the regular blog circuit attracts some unwanted visitors (I suspect about 10 to 15%) whose interest is not in the blog itself, but how it can be used to exploit the visitor's own, often very dubious, agenda. (The commonest google search query phrase is "google pagerank" which is presumably used by people whose only interest is to find out how much traffic passes through my blog!.) For this reason I moderate all comments and reject as spam all which were clearly posted for the sole reason of seducing people who visit my site to instead visit their casino site, dating agency, malware distribution site, etc., etc.  

The fact that the traffic on the main site has increased by about 10% suggests that the Newsletter has had a good effect. Of course some of this traffic will be to due to people moving from the Newsletter to the main site - but this will all be "interested" traffic - unlike the google generated traffic which includes people looking for Hemel Hempstead Hospital and ending up on a page with information on the 19th century history of the hospital!. As someone who started their working life as an information scientist, helping to insure that people were supplied with relevant information, the real measure is how useful the site its - and not how many people visit it only to find it is not what they were looking for. 

There was only one statistical disappointment in 2012. In 2011 we nearly made the £1000 target for the mentally ill of Hertfordshire, and I optimistically set the target for 2012 for £1200 and we have fallen short, only raising £775 (plus a bit more that will be reclaimable through Gift Aid by UK tax payers.) at a time when the economic situation is putting increasing pressures on mental health services. We have made this total because of some generous donations. The "gap" is in part to the number of people who are delighted to be helped (and tell me so) who never get round to dropping as little as £5 in the electronic collecting box.

The 2102 collecting box is now closed and I am in the process of opening a new one for 2013 (this may take a day or to). If you didn't donate in 2012 why not get the new fund off to a good start by donating now.