Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Genea-Musings Statistics for 2009 - Post 1

Being a "numbers guy," I can't resist checking out my blog statistics - number of visitors, page views, readers, etc. I use three services for this, Sitemeter, StatCounter and Google Analytics. They all give somewhat different numbers.

So how many readers does Genea-Musings have? It's really hard to tell! Here is the StatCounter report for Page Loads, Unique Visitors and Returning Visitors to the web site URL for 2009:



From the above graph, it appears that there were, on average, about 150 unique visitors, about 350 returning visitors, and about 750 page views every day.

How does that compare to years past? Here is the same graph from January 2007 to December 2009 - three years worth of data:

From these two graphs, the attentive reader can see that 2008 was a year of significant growth for Genea-Musings visitors and page views, and 2009 was a year of limited growth in visitors and page views.

Here is the same graph from Google Analytics for 2009 with Visits (blue line, right scale) and Page Views (orange line, left scale):


The Google Analytic statistics say:

*Total Number of Visits = 152,942 (average of 419 per day)

* Total Number of Page Views = 240,247 (average of 658 per day)

* Number of Unique Visitors = 84,112 (average of 230 per day).

Where do these people come from? The top 5 countries of visits come from:

* USA = 123,103 (80.5%
* Canada = 8,756 (5.7%)
* United Kingdom = 7,495 (4.9%)
* Australia - 2,658 (1.7%)
* (not set) - 864 (0.6%)

Of course, these numbers only measure those readers who click on a bookmark/favorite or a link on a web page or email to reach www.GeneaMusings.com. They don't measure the people who read this blog in an RSS feed. The numbers of persons subscribing to RSS feeds for this blog include:

* Google Reader = 103 (from my Blogger Dashboard page)
* Feedburner = 402 (today's counter) - many of these via email
* Bloglines = 144 (sum of six different feeds)

However, these don't include persons who read the blog on Facebook and other social media that publish posts on their site with my permission - I have over 600 "Friends" on Facebook, and some of them read my blog posts there without going to the URL or an RSS feed. Then there are the unauthorized copies of my posts on spam blogs...

The best estimate I can make is that an average of about 900 to 1,000 persons read Genea-Musings every day. Interestingly, the number who visit the URL is only 25 to 30% of that total.

I will post more information about the most popular blog posts during 2009, and the most popular search terms, in another post.

THANK YOU to all of you for reading my ramblings and musings. I try to stay on top of the genealogy news while performing my own research, furthering my genealogy education, and enjoying life. The opinions expressed on this blog are my own, based on my knowledge, experience, and the analysis tools at my disposal.

4 comments:

Katrina said...

Hey Randy,

I'm a numbers nerd too, so I totally dig these kinds of posts. (Also, it lets me gauge what size of a fish I am in the pool of "internet genealogy blogs". :P ) This also reminded me to give a second go-round to Google Analytics as I had some trouble getting it installed properly the first time I tried.

Joan Miller - Luxegen Genealogy said...

I love stats too and it is always interesting to see what stats trackers others are using. Your Geneamusings has a very impressive alexa.com rank too!

Elyse said...

Randy - Wonderful post! I always love reading about statistics posts. It is so fascinating to learn about the statistics.

Your statistics are wonderful. How fantastic.

Anonymous said...

I love your blog and read it via RSS every day. I'm also one of your friends on facebook, however I have to 'hide' you or your twits take over my news feed!

Keep on bloggin'