MEDIA WATCH: Substance site statistics increasing rapidly as more readers go to substancenews.net
The amount of traffic at the main Substance website (this site, www.substancenews.net) is increasing at a rapid rate, even with more than a year of steady growth. Many longtime members of the Substance staff and readers will recall when we celebrated, around August 2009, the first time our total hits for the year-to-date reached over 1,000,000. If the traffic at www.substancenews.net continues to increase at anything near the rate it's been going up, that number may become common regularly — during any one month.
The following are the stats provided by our Web host:
March 2011. Unique visitors: 16,642; Number of visits: 28,707; Pages: 61,165; Hits: 761,657.
The highest previous months in two of these categories were February 2011 (for Unique Visitors, with 12,703) and May 2010 (for Hits, with 620,666).
In no month prior to January 2011 did www.substancenews.net get more than 10,000 unique visitors, but since January 2011, we have surpassed that each month.
Through March 2011, for the year (first three months only). Unique visitors: 41,734; Number of visits: 73,920; Pages: 179,754; Hits: 1,860,868.
For the entire year 2010. Unique visitors: 75,170; Number of visits: 172,239; Pages: 634,202; Hits: 5,322,707.
For the entire year 2009. Unique visitors: 56,867; Number of visits: 202,284; Pages: 358,045; Hits: 2,364,338.
For the entire year 2008. Unique visitors: 10,575; Number of visits: 17,293; Pages: 78,254; Hits: 200,909.
Substance staff members will be discussing the meaning of these trends at the April 16 meetings. For now we are suggesting that the integrity of our reporting, analysis and editing hold up over time, so that people return to Substance for accuracy and integrity, even when they disagree with us.
Substance is also adding new (usually young, but sometimes retiree) reporters and analysts on a regular basis. Those who are interested in joining the Substance staff and sharing the fun can contact the editor at Csubstance@aol.com.
