Figures he doesn’t believe

CCG site traffic figures

Analyse this!

Perhaps I bang these traffic figures into this post like slamming a report onto the desk.

Just hear the satisfying report!

After firmly refusing and being advised to refuse, I grudgingly present the traffic figures for the first seven days of this month. They apply, as the screen dumps make clear, only to the subdomain ‘climateconversation’, not to the whole ‘wordshine’ domain.

Ken will get no more than this from me. I do this only to remove the bad taste that lingers in my mouth after being accused of lying by a man whose admitted aim is quarrel, dissent and discord. That’s what you told me, Ken, isn’t it?

Who knows what innocent visitor might have that unsubstantiated slur stick? Where might it again surface? Better to strangle it at birth — and strangle it with the truth. Better many things had such short lives. Pity more don’t.

What the figures mean, I don’t know. If there are deficiencies in them, point them out, argue about them. I prefer to spend my time fighting climate ignorance and spreading climate facts.

But in this thread, at least, these inane hostilities will not be off topic.

CCG site traffic figures

Visits: 63

20 Thoughts on “Figures he doesn’t believe

  1. Andy on 08/01/2011 at 3:26 pm said:

    For the record, this site has a Google page Rank of 3, Hot Topic 7, and Open Parachute is 5.
    (out of a max of 10, the higher the better)

    http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

    The Page Rank is calculated partly as a result of incoming links, and if these in turn have high page ranks, it will boost your rank

    I think Gareth gets quite a lot of page rank by using Twitter which spreads the “message” across the web. There are a lot of tricks in boosting traffic and Page Rank – Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a discipline in itself.

    By the way, this is in no way is a criticism of this site. It is a simple observation of relative metrics.

    Ultimately, content is king. If you write stuff that people want to read, then the rest takes care of itself.

  2. Care to tell us what programme you are using, Richard?

    I don’t think this is reporting the same thing as the stat counter does. Looks more like data for spider searching, not actual visits.

    I guess its honest of you to say “What the figures mean, I don’t know.”

  3. Andy on 08/01/2011 at 4:54 pm said:

    The “agents” tab on the page image shown will show the spider results – the most active is usually Googlebot. (ie the traffic is itemised by user agent – IE, Firefox, Chrome, Sarafi, GoogleBot etc)

    I’d be very surprised if much of the traffic shown on these pages is from Spiders. An average hits per hour of 490 or so does not come from spidering.

    Ken, are you in the auditing business? 😉

  4. No I am not Andy. Nor am I a specialist in web site logging. But I have looked into ranking systems. I have tried all I can find usable with NZ blogs. And if Technorati and Alexa don’t list conversations I don’t believe Richards claimed figures (remember something like a daily average of 3500 page views. That would rank the blog 4th in NZ! Do you believe that?)

    Go figure.

    Pity Richard is not prepared to put a proper stat counter on his blog.

    One other bit of data that’s easily accessible is google reader RSS subs. Conversations has 18 – at least one of them mine. Hot Topic 114, Sciblogs 79, Open Parachute 160.

    • Andy on 08/01/2011 at 5:56 pm said:

      The page views can be misleading as each page can consist of multiple page fragments (e.g if the comments get loaded separately then they might count as separate page views).

      The unique referrers gives a useful metric as this shows what search phrases are driving traffic to your site. This can provide some amusement at times.

      Here is a classic blog post by Microsoft employee Eric Lippert, who went through his web logs and answered the questions where Google searches landed on his site.

      (His site is a technical blog on programming, but questions such as “How to I get a boy to like me” found there way to his blog somehow)

      http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2004/05/11/riddle-me-this-google.aspx

    • Andy on 08/01/2011 at 8:42 pm said:

      This thread brought out the trainspotter in me. Beware!

    • Andy on 09/01/2011 at 10:00 am said:

      Basically, you want to see Richard’s Site listed in your NZ blogs speadsheet that you link to on your site.

      Is this the bottom line, Ken?

      If it is, I am sure we can do a lot of work to boost traffic to this site. It would be a pleasure.

  5. jon on 08/01/2011 at 11:18 pm said:

    Alexa NZ traffic rankings – Hot Topic 4799
    Climate Conversation 1780

  6. Bob D on 09/01/2011 at 12:10 am said:

    I’ve been watching this little interaction with some interest. I (like Richard T) don’t care too much about site stats, it’s the content of the posts that matter, but I have been far more interested in what it reveals about Ken himself. Let’s see what he said previously:

    Actually, Richard Treadgold If you send me the evidence of your claim for you stats (approx 3500 page views per day over the last few months) including visit number (which the ranking is based on) I promise to write up a post on my blog bringing your amazing success to the attention of my readers.

    Fair deal, eh? You may want to be modest – i don’t mind advertising your success. I often write about NZ blog rankings.

    Now, I’m not sure about you, but what I’m looking at at the top of this page is a graphic from Richard showing precisely the daily page view data Ken requested. Suddenly Ken is wriggling this way and that, muttering about Alexa, even after Andy explained the shortcomings with Alexa, and after Ken himself said this:

    Alexa actually ranks websites. I don’t think their ranking is as reliable as actual visit numbers.

    Now suddenly, being presented with the clear evidence he demanded, he comes out with this clanger:

    And if Technorati and Alexa don’t list conversations I don’t believe Richards claimed figures (remember something like a daily average of 3500 page views.

    So let’s summarise. Ken demands to see Richards site stats, specifically the page views per day. Ken also states (and Andy agrees, explaining why) that Alexa (which he can access) is not overly reliable compared to the actual site data (which he can’t) hence the demand to produce the actual data. Ken implies that Richard is lying. Richard produces the actual data. Ken reads the numbers, and then declares that he still doesn’t believe these numbers he demanded so loudly. Why not? Well, because Alexa doesn’t support them!!

    Is it just me, or does anyone else find this a little bizarre?

    I’m looking forward to Ken’s post on OP trumpeting Richard’s success, although I’m pretty sure he’ll manage to turn it into an attack on this site.

    • Andy on 09/01/2011 at 9:16 am said:

      Conversations probably doesn’t appear on Technorati because you have to manually add your blog to it.
      Wordpress does this for you with insertion of appropriate tags, I think.

  7. Andy, yes I would like to see Treadgolds blog listed in the NZ Rankings. I would like to see all serious NZ blogs listed – especially any concerned about ranking as comments here indicate. I keep suggesting this to bloggers – it requires very little effort for them or me.

    Yes it possibly helps blogs get more traffic – I notice every time I do a monthly ranking people do follow many of the links. I guess the 7day average spreadsheet also helps but I have no access the google doc traffic.

    If the listing also inspires bloggers to improve their blogs and attract more traffic – good on them.

    More realistically the rankings give each blogger an indication of how they compare with others. They can draw their own conclusions. But the more bloggers on the list the more useful it is.

    Jon – you are mistaken . The figure you quote is for moonshine. Conversations is not even listed on Alexa. This is an indication of low traffic and short history. However , SciBlogs is younger than conversations and is listed. So low traffic us the obvious problem.

    Andy, one can add one’s blog to Technorati. I suggest Richard Treadgold dies this himself. But usually any blog with reasonable traffic is added automatically.

  8. Bob D I am quite prepared to write a blog post on Richard Treadgolds conviction that he ranks 4th in NZ . I just need a bit more information.

    I have asked Richard what programme he is using for the data – obviously I would like to find out what the data means. Richard himself says:

    “What the figures mean, I don’t know”

    He obviously needs help.

    So Richard – what about it? What is the programme? What us the file? I am prepared to research it a bit and write something on your claims.

    • Bob D on 10/01/2011 at 10:34 am said:

      Ken – It’s not Richard’s claim, it’s your claim. Richard merely made a passing comment about his daily page views recently being 2.5 times higher than the figure you mentioned of 1400 (ie: 3500). You didn’t believe him, and you demanded proof of the page view stats. You insinuated he was lying. You offered (somewhat sarcastically) to put up a post on OP if Richard complied – it was your offer, not Richard’s request. He didn’t claim to be NZ’s 4th largest site, you said that was what his stats meant:

      Currently Hot Topic is ranked 7 th at 1515 page views/day. Your claim would rank your blog at 4th above SciBlogs and “here comes the Sun.”

      If that is so you should shout it from the roof tops! It would be great publicity for your cause – a higher rank than the leading scientific blogs in the country!!

      I actually don’t believe you – you have made a mistake (perhaps monthly page views”?) or it is just bravado. But it is extremely easy for you to confirm.

      Then later on you said this:

      So again you make a claim that can’t be substantiated …[snip] Even when you would get great publicity for your blog.

      What about sharing the average daily visit numbers for the last week?

      No?

      And again later:

      I repeat – climate conversation blog doesn’t even rank.

      Best explanation – Treadgold has been telling porkies again.

      Of course, based on Richard’s stats, it may make more sense if he allows you to post here instead, it’ll probably reach a larger audience.

  9. val majkus on 09/01/2011 at 8:59 pm said:

    Just as a matter of interest why is this so important to Ken? If I had were a blog host it would be the last thing on my mind!

  10. Alexander K on 10/01/2011 at 4:44 am said:

    I found Climate Conversation NZ listed on WUWT’s blogroll – I don’t comment much, but generally like the style, content and tone. I had look at Hot Topic a couple of months ago and thought it a waste of bandwidth. For me, the blog editor spends too much time denigrating those he doesn’t agree with, rather than getting on with posting interesting stuff.

  11. Anthropogenic Global Cooling on 10/01/2011 at 10:53 am said:

    Ken’s just jealous that his blog doesn’t have the traffic that this one does. What Ken really needs to ask himself is why. Perhaps it’s because Ken releases the personal details of those who ask for evidence of AGW, first as a threat, and then as revenge when he’s lost the debate (see ‘Painted into a Corner’) – is it such a crime to ask for evidence. The funny thing is that he got the wrong person with the same name. No wonder his blog’s visitor numbers lag behind Climate Conversation, perhaps they’re afraid that he’ll try and leak their bank account details next.

  12. Bruce of Newcastle on 12/01/2011 at 10:40 am said:

    I think a fair number of us Aussies are interested in what is going on in NZ, not least that our PM has delusions of ETS’s too.

  13. Well, Treadgold is not going to answer my question about which programme he is using to get his data on his blog activity. I guess as he claims he doesn’t know what the figures mean he probably also doesn’t know the programme being used.

    My guess is it is something like Webalizer. (The screenshots in his post are very similar). This is used to extract data from the serve access and usage log files.

    There are a number of problems with this approach. It requires intelligent use to avoid over counting because of the way a page or visit may be interpreted. It can for example include each separate image file on a page as a visit if not careful. (See Simpletons Guide to Web Server Analysis).

    Wikipedia also describes problems with the results from Webalizer (and this should apply to similar programmes):

    “Generated statistics do not differentiate between human visitors and robots. As a result all reported metrics are higher than those due to people alone. Many webmasters claim that webalizer produces highly unrealistic figures of visits, which are sometimes 200 to 900% higher than the data produced by javascript based web statistics such as “Google Analytics” or “StatCounter”.”

    Treadgolds promotion of his blog on the basis of such a programme may just be naivety on his part. However, if he is at interested in comparing his blog traffic with that of other NZ blogs (and after all he is the one raising the issue) then he should install a proper stat counter like “statcounter” or “sitemeter’. If he allows public access (as 230 other NZ blogs do) he can then see his blog traffic ranked objectively and honestly.

  14. I have included reference to this blog in my recent post Comparing blog visit statistics.

    However, I kept the name of this blog anonymous to avoid Richard Treadgold’s obvious embarrassment.

    However, if anyone wishes to debate my points they are welcome to contribute to the comments on my post.

  15. Anthropogenic Global Cooling on 27/01/2011 at 6:04 pm said:

    Don’t visit Ken’s blog under any circumstances. If he doesn’t agree with you, or he doesn’t like what you say, he’ll release your personal details or any other dirt he thinks he can find in an effort to shut you up. No wonder nobody wants to go there.

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