It’s a numbers game

Posted By admin on Jan 14, 2014 | 0 comments


I run Google Analytics on this blog as well as its’ sister-site the Northern League Forum and, like any website owner I guess, I’m fascinated by the numbers it spits out at me.

I don’t usually have the time to dig too deep but it’s fun to occasionally have a good look at the numbers and try to figure out what they mean. Here’s a brief analysis of my 2013 according to Google Analytics.

The Matamata Bus

The blog received 9,614 visits and 19,490 page views during 2013. These numbers are pretty pitiful really but, like anything statistical, can be qualified to suit just about any narrative you like. So I’ll do that.

For a start, the site had plenty of downtime at various times during the year. I didn’t launch until late March and I was literally comatose during the last three or four months of the year.

On a positive note, from April through to July the site was averaging between 120-150 visits a day, which is not too bad I guess. The simple lesson, and I don’t need Google for this, is that when I post articles the site gets traffic, and when I don’t it doesn’t.

I’ll look to be more active during 2014 and I’ll be interested to see how the numbers change. Hopefully they go through the roof. I’m glad I’ll have something to compare with this time next year.

Northern League Forum

I’ve been running the Northern League Forum since the start of 2010 so I have a really good statistical history at my fingertips. The most striking thing is that 2013 was a record year as far as both site visits and page views are concerned. By a long way.

The numbers for 2011 and 2012 were fairly static with approximately 80,000 site visits and approximately 163,000 page views. For 2010 we had about 66,000 and about 148,000. Decent numbers, sure, but they exploded in 2013.

Last year I had just short of 129,000 visits to the site and nearly 325,000 page views.

Why? I dunno. Maybe the conversations were just that bit better last year, or perhaps there was more to talk or anonymously whinge about. Whatever, I was very pleased with the traffic stats.

Not surprisingly, Auckland was, by a long, long way the place most of the site visitors arrived from (almost 79%). Hamilton, Tauranga and Wellington were the next three cities on the list. Melbourne and Sydney also made the top ten.

Visitors came from 711 different cities, which is a decent number but not too surprising in this day and age. I was pleased, however, to see that a town called Chatham in the USA made the top 50. Aren’t search engines a wonderful thing?

My involvement with the site has been pretty passive over the last couple of years. I’ve only made the odd post and removed the occasional obnoxious comment. Apart from that, all I pretty much do is monitor the site (like a low rent NSA pleb).

It does make me wonder, however, what could happen if I became a bit more active with it. I’ve also started to think it might be possible to make the site a bit more commercial, so might explore that during the year ahead.

Let’s see what 2014 brings.

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