Since I've been on the Discover Magazine website for one year I thought I'd look at some patterns in Google Analytics. Specifically, over the interval from April 1st 2010 to April 30th 2011 (alas, I lost access to the ScienceBlogs traffic data). For example, what institutions are people coming to this website from? To do that I just filtered for "university" and "college" in Google Analytics. Below are those institutional addresses which sent 500 or more visits to this website over the year.
Now let's look at visitor loyalty:
InstitutionVisits
HARVARD UNIVERSITY2568
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON1973
STANFORD UNIVERSITY1372
BEIHANG UNIVERSITY1359
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY1283
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO1188
OXFORD UNIVERSITY1169
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH1009
YALE UNIVERSITY990
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON974
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS958
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA936
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY893
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN879
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA842
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES841
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY840
YORK UNIVERSITY835
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO805
UPPSALA UNIVERSITY802
BOSTON UNIVERSITY784
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA784
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO746
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY732
DUKE UNIVERSITY724
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE723
UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI710
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS700
UNIVERSITY SIEGEN CAMPUS NETWORK670
CORNELL UNIVERSITY669
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA665
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY654
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY650
SMITH COLLEGE637
BROWN UNIVERSITY626
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS614
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND611
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL589
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY583
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY552
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY532
SAINT JOHN S UNIVERSITY - COLLEGE OF SAINT BENEDICT518
MCGILL UNIVERSITY505
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ACADEMIC AFFAIRS501
Here's a chart, log-transformed:
Visit that was the visitor's nth visit% of all visits
1 times82474662%
2 times1142789%
3 times515444%
4 times326292%
5 times239182%
6 times189001%
7 times155761%
8 times133451%
9-14 times535424%
15-25 times520644%
26-50 times554444%
51-100 times419503%
101-200 times241912%
201+ times144771%
There's really two types of traffic to this weblog. 1) Organic referral traffic. Often search engine. These are "transients" who are picking up a "slice" of information from this weblog. They're actually the majority. I'm cool with that. I'm a disher-of-data and on oracle of analysis. I don't begrudge people their grab & go, I do the same. 2) Then there's the "core" repeat readership. A subset of these are the ones who leave a lot of comments. This is the "GNXP community." If I read the chart above correct nearly 15,000 of you accessed this weblog more than 200+ over a year. Pretty intense. Has to be more people than Paul! No offense, but I'm egotistical enough not to be super-conscious about how many people are reading me. Probably one reason I've used the r-word without thought! For the nerds:
Geodata. Kind of ho-hum:
Number%
Browsers
Firefox52855240%
Internet Explorer30599623%
Chrome24667018%
Safari17978513%
Mozilla Compatible Agent333583%
Opera225992%
OS
Windows92961070%
Macintosh23960018%
Linux549194%
iPhone385233%
Android337393%
iPad169381%
Screen size
1280x80025090319%
1024x76816883313%
1280x102413974810%
1440x90013108510%
1680x10501081838%
1366x768969217%
1920x1200587984%
1920x1080517794%
Visits
United States832837
Canada95066
United Kingdom78348
Australia36826
Germany22947
India19798
France13845
Sweden13325
Netherlands12459
Finland11576
Turkey9832
New Zealand8410
Spain8284
Brazil8124
Poland6698
Philippines6376
Ireland6228
Italy6062
China6020
Japan5621
New York45494
London28328
Chicago17831
San Francisco17088
Los Angeles15806
Seattle15169
Washington13841
Sydney10354
Toronto9698
Austin8626
Houston8413
Melbourne8399
Philadelphia8206
Atlanta8106
Cambridge8044
Boston6756
Minneapolis6568
Portland6494
Denver6107
Dallas5957
Referral stuff, sites people came from and keywords:
Visits
google.com87676
reddit.com72005
discovermagazine.com50253
gnxp.com41779
scienceblogs.com36280
blogs.discovermagazine.com32143
fark.com29277
facebook.com27001
stumbleupon.com24617
digg.com11743
twitter.com9006
google.co.uk8230
marginalrevolution.com7486
rense.com7292
johnhawks.net7080
google.ca6966
images.google.com6733
daringfireball.net5643
news.ycombinator.com5474
gene expression4578
gnxp3949
marc hauser2954
gnxp discover2772
razib discover2455
razib khan2268
gene expression discover1936
china provinces1873
discover gnxp1727
black and white twins1358
bad astronomy1202
world map1026
linkage disequilibrium885
discover blogs791
tiger pictures777
north korea vs south korea744
peter thiel580
gene expression blog561
+"the 10,000 year explosion"544
genghis khan descendants525
ashkenazi jews488
I'm not gonna lie, I'm always creeped out how many people search for my name. Some of them are probably looking for my content, but some of them are probably a little too fixated on the man, not the message. I don't even want to get into the shocking number of female blogger names which come up in my keyword list (people who leave comments, people who I've mentioned). Also, I guess Phil Plait is a "pretty big deal", so many people come to this website by mistake looking for him! Most of the other stuff is pretty understandable. Except for "tiger pictures." That made me laugh.
Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
