Thursday, December 31, 2009
2009 Statistics for BENBEST.COM
Traffic on my website peaked in 2007 with 1,548,099 unique sessions, declining slightly in 2008 to 1,505,117 and then to 1,483,335 in 2009. I attribute this to competition from Wikipedia. My use of unsophisticated HTML and the "old fashioned" appearance of my website may also be a factor. I am mainly interested in content rather than form, and I have not bothered to learn how to produce better-looking form.
According to ALEXA.COM on December 31, 2008 the 3-month average world-wide ranking for BENBEST.COM was 170,071, but only got to as high as 237,651 in December 2009. Three month ranking in the United States peaked at 90,096 on Christmas Eve. At the end of December, BENBEST.COM was receiving 1.3 ten-thousandths of one percent of website hits in the world.
Alexa.com is now giving demographic information on the sources of sessions. The overwhelming largest source of sessions to BENBEST.COM is school browsers. That makes sense of the fact that that largest education category of my users is "some college" and the second largest age category is 18-24. But it does not explain why the largest represented age group is 45-54 and why female visitors are over-represented, whereas male visitors are under-represented. Although I can understand how Alexa can distinguish school browsers from home and work browsers, I am skeptical that it can determine gender or age group with accuracy.
As usual, October (145,846), November (148,709), and December 155,688) — in that order — were the months with the highest session counts in 2009. As usual, there were about twice as many sessions in the first half of December as in the second half. Most of the year, Causes of Death is the most popular page on my website. The History of Christmas averages 30-40 hits per day during most of the year, but on December 14 this year it peaked at 1,312 hits. Every year, Death by Murder becomes the most popular page on my website between Christmas and New Year's, peaking just before New Year's and never the most popular during the rest of the year.
Here are my comparisons of the PageViews I got in December 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 for some of my favorite pages:
| Webpage | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The History of Christmas | 44,446 | 39,842 | 27,477 | 15,642 | 23,500 |
Mechanisms of Aging | 4,105 | 6,392 | 7,873 | 3,603 | 7,103 |
Alcohol — Health Benefit or Hazard? | 2,943 | 2,829 | 2,408 | 2,002 | 2,084 |
Cryonics — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) | 973 | 1,311 | 1,105 | 1,520 | 1,217 |
Vitrification in Cryonics | 772 | 1,110 | 959 | 1,133 | 1,154 |
Say's Law and Economic Growth | 568 | 619 | 651 | 806 | 812 |
An Austrian Theory of Business Cycles | 471 | 634 | 651 | 1,245 | 656 |
Schemers in the Web | 416 | 767 | 462 | 506 | 416 |
The decline of many of my long established pages is offset
by the rise of other pages. In December 2009
Causes of Death got 19,675 hits,
Death by Murder got 16,387 hits,
Brain Neurotransmitters got 12,093 hits, and
Perfusion & Diffusion in Cryonics Protocol got 5,054 hits
| phrase | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| history of christmas | 7,954 | 2,442 | 1,805 | 3,175 |
| melatonin | 80 | 1,532 | 136 | 117 |
| neurotransmitters | 823 | 468 | 1,319 | 804 |
| christmas history | 747 | 494 | 548 | 1,056 |
| causes of death | 565 | 805 | 956 | 370 |
| cryonics | 119 | 153 | 131 | 85 |
| vitrification | 70 | 46 | 80 | 71 |
| deprenyl | 73 | 87 | 46 | 29 |
| diogenes | 275 | 136 | 131 | 88 |
| essential fatty acids | 90 | 77 | 107 | 177 |
| say's law | 86 | 65 | 126 | 155 |
| n-acetylcysteine | 81 | 293 | 507 | 180 |
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
2008 Statistics for BENBEST.COM
Traffic on my website seems to be declining
slightly. In 2008 there were 1,505,117 unique
sessions as opposed to 1,548,099 unique sessions
in 2007, 1,491,845 in 2006, and 1,252,175 in 2005.
Pageviews were 2,127,350 in 2008 as opposed to
2,137,172 pageviews in 2007, 2,197,133
in 2006 and 1,668,890 in 2005. In seeming
contraction to these stats, according
to the traffic rankings at
ALEXA.COM on December 31, 2008 the
3-month average world-wide ranking for
BENBEST.COM
was 170,071, which was more than three times as high as
Alcor Life Extension Foundation (565,401) and more
than six times as high as the
Cryonics Institute (1,116,857). My highest country ranking by Alexis.com
was in Sri Lanka, for some reason: 12,592 followed by the
Philippines: 42,097. My rankings in the United States,
Canada, China and the United Kingdom were 80,264, 101,348,
121,743 and 180,585 respectively. Overall, 45.8% of my
traffic came from the United States and 9.8% came from China
Below are some tables that summarize comparative
statistics for my website in the last few of years.
All of the data may be understated because I have heard
that some ISPs like AOL do caching of websites, so I would
not record many AOL hits (actually I never see AOL as a
source in my statistics).
Here are my comparisons of the PageViews I got in December
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 for some of my favorite pages (you have
to look WAY DOWN in this silly Blogger):
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The decline of many of my long established pages is offset
by the rise of other pages.
Causes of Death at 13,346 in 2008 has been a very popular staple on
my website for a long time.
Brain Neurotransmitters at 10,527,
Diffusion and Perfusion in Cryonics Protocol at 4,092 and
Cancer Death at 3,714 were very popular in 2008.
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the most popular page on my website year-round is generallyCauses of Death. The second most popular page on my website is usually
Death by Murder (although Brain Neurotransmitters sometimes is second). But I have noticed that during the period between Christmas and early January, Death by Murder will be the most popular page. My speculation about why this happens is that people browsing the web during that period are mostly looking for entertainment, whereas during the rest of the year there are more people doing research.
The search phrases now distinguish between "history of christmas" (1,805) and
"the history of christmas" (1,709) which may have affected the "history of
christmas" statistic. A couple of other popular terms/phrases in 2008
were "glutamate" (1,162) and "amygdala function" (374).
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Monday, December 31, 2007
2007 Statistics for BENBEST.COM
There may have been some growth in visitors to my website in 2007:
1,548,099 unique sessions in 2007 as opposed to 1,491,845
unique sessions in 2006 and 1,252,175 in 2005. Pageviews
were 2,137,172 in 2007 as opposed to 2,197,133 pageviews
in 2006 and 1,668,890 in 2005. According
to the traffic rankings at
ALEXA.COM on December 31, 2007 the
3-month average world-wide ranking for
BENBEST.COM
was 240,723, which was more than twice as high as
Alcor Life Extension Foundation (498,520) and about
four times as high as the
Cryonics Institute (962,108). That is far below
Wikipedia (rank 8 on the same date), but still pretty
impressive. I actually think that Wikipedia is responsible
for much of the erosion of my popularity growth. To a lesser
extent, the lack of professional looking quality (due to my
handwritten HTML) is another factor cutting into my popularity.
My ranking on the "History of Christmas" search in Google
has dropped from near the top of the first
page to near the bottom of the first page. Nonetheless,
I got a plug on December 21 from WhatReallyHappened.com
that gave my Christmas page 2,398 hits, probably the
most hits any page on my website has ever experienced
in a single day. My highest country ranking by Alexis.com
was in Jamaica, for some reason: 13,911 followed by the
Philippines: 31,344. My rankngs in the United States and
Canada and Germany were 112,124 and 180,113 and 480,891,
respectively.
Below are some tables that summarize comparative
statistics for my website in the last couple of years.
I have just discontinued my use of Superstats in favor
of Urchin as a source of data because Superstats is so
expensive and does not really give me much additional
information other than comparison of past months and
years -- and I have reason to believe the data is suspect.
All of the data may be understated because I have heard
that some ISPs like AOL do caching of websites, so I would
not record many AOL hits (actually I never see AOL as a
source in my statistics).
Here are my comparisons of the PageViews I got in December
2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 for some of my favorite pages (you have
to look WAY DOWN in this silly Blogger):
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Monday, January 01, 2007
2006 Statistics for BENBEST.COM
I have become increasingly disinterested in the statistics on
my website, possibly because growth does not seem as great as
it once was. Nonetheless, there does seem to be growth and my
interest in my website statistics is still great enough to
be called an obsession.
There was growth in popularity of my website in 2006: 1,491,845
unique sessions in 2006 as opposed to 1,252,175 in 2005. Pageviews
were 2,197,133 in 2006 as opposed to 1,668,890 in 2005. According
to the traffic rankings at
ALEXA.COM on December 31, 2006 the
3-month average ranking for
BENBEST.COM
was 205,547, which was more than twice as high as
Alcor Life Extension Foundation (453,805) and more than
four times as high as the
Cryonics Institute (969,367). That is far below
Wikipedia (rank 13 on the same date), but still pretty
impressive. Even more amazing, my one-week average rank on
December 31, 2006 was 139,480. I think it would be cool to be in
the top 100,000, but I am expecting my ranking to drop in
January. The last week of the year is one of the slowest for
internet use (comparable to July and August) and I think that
I am still benefiting from the extreme popularity of my
The History of Christmas page, which swamps all of my
other pages in popularity during December (and to a lesser
extent in November), but not during the rest of the year.
Below are some tables that summarize comparative
statistics for my website in the last couple of years.
I have just discontinued my use of Superstats in favor
of Urchin as a source of data because Superstats is so
expensive and does not really give me much additional
information other than comparison of past months and
years -- and I have reason to believe the data is suspect.
All of the data may be understated because I have heard
that some ISPs like AOL do caching of websites, so I would
not record many AOL hits (actually I never see AOL as a
source in my statistics).
Here are my comparisons of the PageViews I got in December
2004, 2005 and 2006 for some of my favorite pages (you have
to look WAY DOWN in this silly Blogger):
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Friday, May 05, 2006
Website Traffic Update, late Spring 2006
During this Spring I have added more "interactive" content to my website, notably the Playground of Computer Programs and Life Extension Values Clarification Survey and Results. I highly recommend the latter.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
More about the Wikipedia Life Extension entry
Wikipedia Life extension page. I can live with some fighting and compromise, but I do have my limits. At the moment, at least, there is some compromise and no fighting, and I feel that the page is conveying a fairly accurate overview of life extension. And I am hopeful that I can help maintain this situation.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
BENBEST.COM statistics for first week of January 2006
Typically the last week of December and the first week of January represent deep dips for the number of sessions visiting my website -- comparable to the lows of the summers. After peaking at around 13,000 PageViews per week in January, PageViews
for my www.benbest.com/history/xmas.html page dropped in the first week of January to 1,768. Even without the otherwise slowness of this period that would represent a significant drop. Of course most schools are not in session during the last week of December and the first week of January in Christian-associated countries. Nonetheless, the "bottom line" figure for the first week of January was 24,169 sessions. That compares very favorably with the peaks of last Spring, which were around 27,000. Typically the weekly number of sessions climbs from the first week of January to a week sometime between late March and early May. So my prediction is that mid-Spring highs in 2006 will approach 50,000 per week.
I have done some more careful analysis of the meaning of session time. I have come to the conclusion that of the 24,169 sessions in the first week of January, approximately 20,000 of those sessions were for less than 10 seconds. About 500 would be for 3−10 minutes, another 500 would be for 10−30 minutes and about 150 would be for more than 30 minutes. Speaking personally, I would rather print a page than look at it on-line for more than 30 minutes. So I would guess that number of people actually looking at my website pages long enough to get meaningful information is in the area of 2,000 to 5,000 per week.
In the past I have paid much attention to the search terms leading to my website (because at least 75% of the PageViews come from search engines), but I am finding this matter less interesting now than previously. I used to be impressed that the search phase "neuron physiology" would return one of my web pages as the top site on all of the search engines. But the fact that I only get 5 PageViews per week for that search phrase indicates that it is not invoked very often. The search terms "neurotransmitters", "ischemia" and "vitrification" return 200, 48 and 13 PageViews per week (respectively) and I am on the first page of searches on those terms with Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines (but not top). I used to be top on all of the search engines for "vitrification", but now have been displaced by Wikipedia -- a bitter irony insofar as I wrote much of the text for the Wikipedia vitrification page.
