Mark Reckons - November 2009 STATPORN

In November I had 11,084 Pageviews from 9,272 Visits and a total of 6,426 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) What is Nadine Dorries on?

2) Fiscal Responsibility Bill is a landmine for the Tories

3) The Sun smears Professor David Nutt's family

4) Sir Jeremy Bagge: "Women, Know Your Limits!"

5) Five years for handing in a gun to the police?

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Twitter.com

2) Iain Dale's Diary

3) Lib Dem Blogs

4) Order-Order.com

5) Lib Dem Voice

2,582 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (233)

2) sir jeremy bagge (162)

3) elizabeth truss (118)

4) dr les king (72)

5) jeremy bagge (56)

Mark Reckons - October 2009 STATPORN

In October I had 9,650 Pageviews from 7,675 Visits and a total of 4,891 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) BBC Question Time Live Chat - 22nd October 2009 - #bbcqt (The infamous Nick Griffin one had nearly 3 times as many attendees to the chat as I normally get and lots of people watching it on replay)

2) Has Bracknell sent a message about local candidates in primaries?

3) Nadine Dorries did not get to parliament on the same basis as everyone else

4) Is Paxman/Boris the new Frost/Nixon?

5) Jan Moir and The Daily Mail vs Twitter and the Blogosphere

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Lib Dem Blogs

2) Twitter.com

3) Lib Dem Voice

4) Bracknell Blog

5) Charlotte Gore Blog

2,397 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (206)

2) david nutt (77)

3) paxman boris (64)

4) elizabeth truss (60)

5) jan moir daily mail (49)

Mark Reckons - September 2009 STATPORN

In September I had 8,668 Pageviews from 7,008 Visits and a total of 4,354 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) Interview with Douglas Carswell MP about "The Plan"

2) The future of newspapers

3) Interview on drugs policy with Phillip Oppenheim, former Conservative minister

4) Fisking Mike Ion on LabourList regarding voting against Labour

5) Campaigning against the ISA will not be easy

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) blogs.telegraph.co.uk

2) Lib Dem Blogs

3) Lib Dem Voice

4) Iain Dale's Diary

5) Twitter.com

1,207 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (246)

2) drayson + goldacre (55)

3) mark reckons blog (28)

4) sarah palin (20)

5) ian tomlinson (14)

Mark Reckons - August 2009 STATPORN

As I expected, probably due to my 2 week holiday my stats are down again on July's figures.

I had 5,440 Pageviews from 4,482 Visits and a total of 3,022 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) Daniel Hannan's opponents are using playground tactics

2) Why are the Taxpayers' Alliance quoted so often?

3) Sarah Palin scandal?

4) NHS debate - Daniel Hannan has not been clear enough

5) The London Paper (thelondonpaper) to close

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Iain Dale's Diary

2) Order Order

3) Lib Dem Blogs

4) Twitter.com

5) TalkCarswell.com

780 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (94)

2) sarah palin (46)

3) sarah palin scandal (43)

4) life isn't fair (15)

5) harriet harman (11)

Thanks again to all who have visited here and I should be back to full blogging strength this month!

Mark Reckons - July 2009 STATPORN

My stats for July are a bit down on the previous month again. However I blogged less due to work commitments ramping up to my holiday in the next couple of weeks and as Stephen on LDV has suggested I think interest has been a bit lower generally in political blogs after the excitement of May (expenses) and June (expenses and elections/cabinet resignations etc.) has subsided.

I had 8,771 Pageviews from 7,151 Visits and a total of 4,942 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) Fascinating research into public perception of the drugs issue

2) Sarah Palin scandal?

3) BBC Question Time Live Chat - 2nd July 2009 - #bbcqt

4) Democracy Diner

5) Andy Coulson will go - and soon

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Twitter.com

2) Badscience.net

3) Lib Dem Blogs

4) Lib Dem Voice

5) Google.com

1,321 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) sarah palin scandal (109)

2) mark reckons (75)

3) palin scandal (55)

4) sarah palin (45)

5) emily apple (30)

My imminent 2 week holiday will likely mean lower figures in August although I will be cueing up some posts to be published whilst I am away.

I am also currently researching a few things which I am hoping will lead to interesting blog posts in late August/September.

À Bientôt!

Mark Reckons - June STATPORN

Well as I suspected would be the case, my stats for this month aren't as good as last months! However they aren't too shabby and show huge progress on the months before May (I am viewing May as a bit of a blip given the media coverage I got). My most visited post this month was "Commentariat vs Bloggertariat" event review - #eiblogger which got a little over 2,000 pageviews. Iain Dale and Guido both linked to it as well as a number of other blogs which pushed the traffic high on it.

So, anyway for June I got 13,585 Pageviews from 10,525 Visits and a total of 7,199 Absolute Unique Visitors. As a quick reference, my figures for the preceding 6 months Pageviews (when I first really started blogging properly and started recording the Analytics) are:

December - 94

January - 704

February - 836

March - 1,392

April - 4,246

May - 21,931

My top 5 blog posts with the number of page views were:

1) "Commentariat vs Bloggertariat" event review - #eiblogger (2,098)

2) Val Swain and Emily Apple - Shocking police footage (611)

3) David Cameron should accept David Davis is the real Tory leader (521)

4) Counterfactual - What if Gordon Brown had stood against Tony Blair in 1994? (499)

5) Gordon Brown - pathetic performance on Andy Marr's show (399)

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Iain Dale's Diary (1,302)

2) Order Order (1,061)

3) Lib Dem Blogs (761)

4) Twitter.com (637)

5) Lib Dem Voice (614)

2,279 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (153)

2) emily apple and val swain (142)

3) emily apple (109)

4) brown resign petition (48)

5) emily apple val swain (41)

One other thing I have noticed as I have been browsing the stats is that there are 794 people who have visited this site more than 25 times, 312 who have visited more than 50 times and 89 who have visited it more than 100 times! This is an interesting metric (I assume it is cumulative over time) and one that I will keep an eye on as I think it shows that I am doing OK on "repeat business" as it were.

Right, here's to a long and prosperous July!

Mark Reckons - May STATPORN

Right, I will almost certainly regret doing this but I have decided to do a Statporn entry for May. I have not done one of these before, I guess because my traffic was fairly light (although steadily growing) but last month was incredible (for me anyway).

I never know which one of these is most important but I got 21,931 Pageviews from 16,534 Visits and a total of 13,355 Absolute Unique Visitors. As a quick reference, my figures for the preceding 5 months Pageviews (when I first really started blogging properly and started recording the Analytics) were:

December - 94

January - 704

February - 836

March - 1,392

April - 4,246

So steady growth, I guess as I have got better known.

The main reasons for such high traffic this month were the MPs safe seats and expenses correlation story that I broke on here which spanned a few posts, were linked to by lots of blogs and got me on Radio 4's "More or Less" (although I didn't get much traffic from the link they put on bbc.co.uk for some reason) and the post about my eye witness account from Andrew MacKay's Bracknell meeting that I attended and blogged about just before he announced he was standing down.

My top 5 blog posts with the number of page views were:

1) MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation - update (5,889)

2) I attended Andrew MacKay's meeting and I think his position is now untenable (5,287)

3) Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal? (1,675)

4) BBC Question Time Live Chat - 21st May 2009 (589)

5) "Gordon Brown resign" petition. Suspicious rate of increase? (412)

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) Order Order (4,645) - Thanks Guido!

2) Bad Science (998) - My science hero, Ben Goldacre linked to me

3) Iain Dale's Diary (957) - Iain linked to both of my main stories

4) Guardian.co.uk (826) - Polly Toynbee linked to the safe seats post

5) Twitter.com (587) - This is partly down to Ben Goldacre tweeting my safe seats post (and loads of his followers retweeting it)

With Lib Dem Blogs and Lib Dem Voice also bringing in traffic of over 500 each.

One of the reasons I hesitated before posting this is that I thought it might seem a bit self aggrandising and I really don't mean it to (not least because I am sure compared to many, these figures are quite low!). I just thought that people might be interested to see how after a few months of effort put into political blogging you can really start to get an audience for your work. Back last December I never would have imagined I could be getting so many people visiting me within 6 months.

The other reason is that I have now set myself a massive target for this month and unless I can break another big story (or two) it is a big ask! Still, you've got to aim high I suppose...

UPDATE: Edited to remove the Analytics chart as the resolution was rubbish and you couldn't read it!