The Wardman Wire

The traffic pattern on the blog was different this week.

All figures used in this article are drawn from the “Slimstat” Wordpress plugin, and are quoted as “Unique Visitors”.

The normal pattern is that a high on Monday slowly falls down to about 15% fewer visitors on the Friday of the same week, subject to Bank Holidays and other one-off events. Recently, Monday traffic has grown from around 600 or so to around 800 or so, and then gradually fallen back.

This week the pattern has been different. It started on Monday at 794 unique visitors, and was up by about 15% by Friday. There was a 15% fall yesterday - which is a little less than usual, but also there was no post yesterday for the first time for a number of Saturdays.

Click the image to see the graph.

Recently traffic on the WW (Wardman Wire) has been ticking up at about 5-6% a week, but the pattern within the week has continued to be a peak on Monday followed by a decline - a fairly standard pattern for blogs.

Why was it different this week?

The obvious point is that the changes on the blog are starting to have an effect, and I’ve already had an email from Garbo saying it must be the new columnist articles (while polishing his fingernails on his lapels). I was allowing 3-4 months for the columns to establish themselves, but this may be happening more quickly.

Also, this week, we had Thunderdragon starting with an extensive roundup about the Nigel Hastilow / Enoch Powell question, and I did a couple of big articles myself.

Anyway, here’s the full list of articles posted between November 5th (Monday) and November 10th (Saturday) - in reverse date order.

• 09: Britblog Roundup #142 Audio Podcast by Suzanne Lamido (0)
• 09: Hot Issue of the Week: Was Enoch Right? by the Thunderdragon (2)
• 09: New Writers and a New Column on the Wardman Wire: Announcement (0)
• 09: Silicon Valley Explained: Gaping Void (0)
• 08: Terrorist Threat no 27384: Anyone Walking on a Cycle Path in Dundee is a Terrorist (3)
• 08: 801 Postings Not Out: How to be a Blogger (2)
• 07: Professor Anthony Grayling defends our Liberty, but the National Secular Society attacks it (1)
• 07: Political Blogs on Topsites (1)
• 07: From the Boys and Girls in Blue… (0)
• 06: Are you in the Directory of BFs? (4)
• 06: A new Beginning for Brown? The Polls & The Need for Debate: Politics Decoded (0)
• 06: The EU Treaty / Constitution: 20 Weeks in Parliament (?) (2)
• 06: Dream on Sweet Chariot: Joke of the Day (0)
• 05: Fistfuls of Dollars: A Straw in the Wind (0)
• 05: Britblog Roundup #142 - Suzanne Lamido (4)
• 05: How to display HTML code in your web pages (2)
• 05: Three wheels on my wagon: Scottish Nationalists (0)
• 05: Sunny’s new Superblog Arrives: Liberal Conspiracy (2)

[tags]traffic, garbo, statistics, number crunching, web traffic, thunderdragon[/tags]