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Codestore.net Site Statistics Jan '04 - Feb '07
Whenever I'm talking to (real) people about my job I'll often mention codestore and talk about how all my work comes about because of it. They'll often ask how many hits it gets and I'll say a couple of million a month. The usual reaction to this is disbelief as they'll be thinking that number of hits is the same things as number of people. Which it isn't at all.
Working out the number of actual visitors is something I don't know how to do and have never really been that bothered about. Having said that, for the last three years I've been diligently downloading the compressed log files from the server to my disk. I then run them through a free weblog analysis tool to produce monthly reports.
These reports are online and run from January '04 to last month. The URL format is the same if you feel the need to see any particular month.
What I've never bothered doing is collating a summary of each month's stats in to a spreadsheet so I could produce graphs showing changes over time. Until now.
Here's how the number of hits per month has changed since Jan '04 — growing from 1 million per month to over 2.2 million.
Following a similar trend is the average number of visitors per day, which has grown from 2,500 to 10,000.
Here's the raw data (XLS, 17kb).
It's this second chart that I pay most attention to as it seems to represent people over machines. What pleases me is not the numbers represented but the fact the line continues to move in the right direction. If ever there were a measure of success of a website this would be it.
What does it all mean though? How many regular readers have I actually got and can this data tell me? Not without factoring in the search spiders and the spambots it can't, which makes it kind of impossible.
All I really care about is maintaining the overall feeling that the site is still well-read and continues to be a worthwhile resource. Right now I feel it is and will continue to push out the content.
As long as you lot keep coming, I'll keep writing.
Comments
Luc (Thu 22 Mar 2007 08:40 AM) website
Congrats... Yeah, this is an excellent source.
Tim Tripcony (Thu 22 Mar 2007 08:54 AM) website / e-mail
Google Analytics does a fairly decent job of extrapolating useful statistics... unique visitors vs. page views, avg. page views per visitor, visitor loyalty, new vs. returning, etc., as well as referrer information. It's rather easy to implement, too.
Dragon Cotterill (Thu 22 Mar 2007 08:54 AM) website / e-mail
I see you suffer from the same type of refferer spam that most boggers get, although yours is somewhat lessened by the fact that Codestore is custom written.
Oh, and your readers will only increase if you keep on writing informed and interesting articles. Keep it up.
Nico (Thu 22 Mar 2007 09:00 AM) e-mail
Keep Writing Jack, you are one of my favorite sources in the wonderful world of Lotus Domino.
Kieren Johnson (Thu 22 Mar 2007 09:09 AM) e-mail
I'll second the recommendation about Google Analytics. It is by far the easiest web stats tool that I have used. It will even track e-commerce stats for you - # orders made, value of orders, most popular items, etc.
Jake Howlett (Thu 22 Mar 2007 09:20 AM)
I just signed up and added Google Analytics for a for an indefinite trial period... hopefully that 10,000 visitors per day doesn't translate to 100 real people or I'll be a tad sad.
John Fazio (Thu 22 Mar 2007 09:41 AM)
I am not familiar with Google's tool but it should produce unique visitor totals per day, month, selected range...
Rich Waters (Thu 22 Mar 2007 09:55 AM) website / e-mail
I recently switched over to Google Analytics, there are quite a few interesting stats that you get, and I like all their dashboard type interfaces. My one issue lately has been that they don't list specific URL's in any of their referrer reports they instead group everything to each specific domain. All in all it is an extremely powerful tool.
Mike (Thu 22 Mar 2007 10:08 AM) e-mail
Jake -
I need to come clean ... I read Codestore 100 times a day.
Seriously though, to see that upward trend is pretty impressive, especially in the digg era where sites get hammered for a few days and then return to normal.
Michael (Thu 22 Mar 2007 10:25 AM)
Count me in for a few visits a day. Does that include the RSS feeds?
Adeleida (Thu 22 Mar 2007 12:22 PM) website / e-mail
Codestore rocks. Thanks for all the giving, Jake.
Steve Castledine (Thu 22 Mar 2007 03:19 PM) website / e-mail
Boy were you unpopular sometime in the middle of last year - what did you say? ;)
With those numbers you should sell ad space - I'm sure you would get a lot of takers. I like how Volker Weber does a monthly auction - so not a page of worthless google ads - just 1 premium ad to take money from each month.
Jake Howlett (Thu 22 Mar 2007 04:17 PM)
Maybe it was a spambot holiday...
Aden (Fri 23 Mar 2007 05:34 AM)
Google Analytics works wonders.
andrew magerman (Fri 23 Mar 2007 06:28 AM) e-mail
Jake, you can count me in for 10 hits per day. Lovely resource, you are on the "daily list of must-read blogs".
Take care Andrew
Patrick Kwinten (Fri 23 Mar 2007 08:10 AM) website / e-mail
So you mean Codestore is a good opportunity to attract visitors for your own Notes blog? =)
kr // Patrick
Jaap (Fri 23 Mar 2007 03:11 PM)
Jake, this type of graph did we use for a business case required for our portal...so hope the hits/per month turn out increased business leads and conversion ;-))
Anyway your content and knowledge is appreciated day and night.
starrow (Sun 6 May 2007 10:34 AM) website
The data shock me too!
Your site is really a good example of blog and personal site.
From the Firebug view,I can see js from Google Analytics.Do you use this wonderful service to gain your website's statistics?
It can serve to solve serveral your questions about vistors.
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