May 2010 Statistics [Updated]

Nate · 2010-06-01T17:35:16Z

Note: Updated with review stats. See: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/post721991.html#p721991 May 2010 is now over for everyone in the world so it's time for the YWS statistical report! Usually, YWS sees a bump in activity for May, and this May was no exception. The post count at 16540 was the highest it's been since March 2009, and certainly the highest so far this year. Pageviews also set another record of ~744,000 (a 1% increase from the previous record holder of April 2010). Yet, it's likely it's actually higher than that, which I explain at the very end. If you wish, you can read a couple of introductory items I added on gauging user activity and growth since last May, or just skip to the statistics at the bottom. The Problem of Gauging User Activity Now, gauging user activity is very tricky. As I've learned especially over the past year, the post count is a poor indicator of user activity. For one, you have blogs that don't figure into the post count. You also have the chatroom, which was rarely open prior to April 2009. Yet, if I look at the visits count, it's woefully below the highs. For May 2010, the unique visitor count was 10,873 meaning that 10,873 different people visited YWS. The high was set in January 2009 at 16,335. That would mean that 33.4% fewer people visited YWS in May 2010 compared to January 2009. That's true, but then you look at the number of visits. In May 2010, there were 45,061 visits to YWS meaning those 10,873 people visited YWS a total of 45,061 times. So the average visitor returned to YWS 4 times. But in January 2009, the visits number was just a little bit higher at 49,134. So how can the number of unique visitors be down 33.4%, but the number of visits be down only 8.2%? One word: Google. When we made the switchover from the old YWS to the new YWS, Google didn't fully adapt and it still hasn't fully adapted. In fact, it'll probably be another several months before Google finally gets used to the new site. Until then, YWS won't show up as often in random searches which means fewer unique visitors. Yet, most of those unique visitors never really came to YWS for YWS. A lot of those 16,000 in January were searching for something else (YWS comes up in a lot of random queries), and spent less than a minute on the site never to come back again. So instead, the best way to gauge user activity is to look at direct traffic to YWS. Those are people that either have YWS bookmarked or type it into the url bar. In May 2010, that number was 19,004. In January 2009? Only 13,316. So using direct traffic as a gauge of user activity shows that user activity has increased by 42% since January 2009 (and January 2009 was the high-point of 2009!). Growth Since May 2009 The only thing to fall from May 2009 to May 2010 was the number of unique visitors, which is a result of YWS not showing up in as many Google searches as before (discussed above). Otherwise, there has been growth in every metric. In terms of pageviews, YWS increased by 63%. In terms of visits, YWS increased negligibly by .31%, but in terms of visits from direct traffic, YWS increased by 60%. In terms of posts, YWS increased by 56%. So all in all, I think we can say that YWS has increased by about 60% since this time last year. That's above average growth for the site and definitely none too shabby. Statistics Without further ado... Visits: 45,061 Pageviews: 744,378 Posts: 16,540 Avg. Time on Site: 16 minutes, 28 seconds Top 10 Countries 1. United States 2. United Kingdom 3. Canada 4. Australia 5. New Zealand 6. Philippines 7. India 8. Ireland 9. Czech Republic 10. South Africa Top 10 Cities 1. London 2. Sydney 3. Cebu, Philippines 4. Brisbane, Australia 5. Saskatoon, Canada 6. Auckland, New Zealand 7. New York City 8. Vancouver, Canada 9. Melbourne, Australia 10. Edinburgh, UK The USA continues to only have one dog in the top 10 cities, while the Oceania region captures five of the top 10 (yes, I know the Philippines isn't technically part of Oceania but it's right next door). Browser Share IE: 36.95% Firefox: 30.62% Safari: 15.08% Chrome: 14.63% Opera: 1.14% All browsers managed to increase their share on YWS this month except for IE, which fell by about 1.5%. The browser with the largest increase (both absolute and relative) was Chrome with a .6% increase. About the stats There was a 12 hour period where no stats were being collected due to an error on my part. Fortunately, this was during the 12 hour quiet period and so I think the pageviews number is off by only 7,000 to 10,000.

beckiw

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Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:46 pm

beckiw says... · Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:46 pm

All I have to say is...Edinbuuuuurrrrrrggggghhhh!

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Mr.Knightley

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Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:07 pm

Mr.Knightley says... · Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:07 pm

Top 10 Countries
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada

Oho! What's that, Kamas? Third? I almost pity you.

Sorry, but I just had to bring that up.

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Nate

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Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:12 pm

Nate says... · Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:12 pm

Regarding the Czech Republic, I'm not sure who they are, but there's at least three active members from there. Right now, YWS is still small enough that it only takes a few active users to get a country into the top 10.

Of course, there's a huge difference between #10 (South Africa) and #1 (USA); the number of visits YWS gets from South Africa is about 1% the number of visits the site gets from the USA.

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Demeter

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Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:18 pm

Demeter says... · Wed Jun 02, 2010 8:18 pm

Nate wrote:Regarding the Czech Republic, I'm not sure who they are, but there's at least three active members from there. Right now, YWS is still small enough that it only takes a few active users to get a country into the top 10.

Or one...

No, seriously, tell me who the Czechs are. I'll teach them a lesson.

(love you, Czechs!)

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Evi

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Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:01 pm

Evi says... · Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:01 pm

I switched to Chrome! I'm sure you're all very proud of me. And I do quite like it, especially over IE.

Awesome stats, though.

"Let's eat, Grandma!" as opposed to "Let's eat Grandma!": punctuation saves lives.

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austenite

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Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:23 pm

austenite says... · Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:23 pm

beckiw wrote:All I have to say is...Edinbuuuuurrrrrrggggghhhh!

The 'Burgh fights back! Wee hoo!

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Lava

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Sat Jun 05, 2010 1:17 pm

Lava says... · Sat Jun 05, 2010 1:17 pm

Blink wrote:There's one important question, though:

Who are the Czechs?

That was my FIRST question. Czechs? Who?

And yay Chrome!

EDIT- I'm sure India is because of me, shubhiloves2write, palantalid, and a certain damsel.in.distress who's planning on returning. (Who's to blame for that?!)

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StellaThomas

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Sun Jun 06, 2010 10:34 pm

StellaThomas says... · Sun Jun 06, 2010 10:34 pm

Woot, Ireland are holding their own! (Myself, Jas and who else?) But seriously, the Czech Republic? I don't know any Czech members!

Come to us! Come join the Small Insignificant European Countries Coalition!

(After all, you knocked Finland off the charts!)

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Nate

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Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:46 pm

Nate says... · Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:46 pm

Per Knightley's request, here are the 2010 Review Stats:

Literary Works: 1,210
All Literary Comments (including comments by author): 5,146
All Literary Comments Minus Author: 4,375
Reviews >= 250 Characters: 3,718
Reviews >= 500 Characters: 2,650
Reviews >= 1000 Characters: 1,470

Review to Work Ratio: 3.07
Percentage of Literary Comments (minus author) that count as a review: 85%

But all that's meaningless unless put into context. In terms of the number of reviews, May 2010 is the 4th largest month out of 66. It actually just barely trails #3 (December 2008) and #2 (January 2009). January 2010 (#1) was so ridiculously high in reviews that I'm not quite sure we'll top it for some time (it wouldn't even necessarily be a good thing to top it just yet... January 2010 led to a burn-out among a lot of YWSers). Needless to say, this is the best showing for May ever.

Additionally, the review to work ratio of 3.07 is also slightly above the average of 2.96.

As for June 2010 thus far, there's been 1,594 reviews thus far and 525 literary works. That works out roughly to a ratio of 3.04. If it continues at the current pace, June 2010 will probably rank somewhere around #8.

EDIT
Here's an interesting statistic: A little more than 50% of all reviews thus far in June 2010 were made by YWSers who have been members for at least eight months. Only 14% of reviews were made by YWSers who have been a member for a month or less. YWSers who have been members for at least a year wrote 40% of all reviews.

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captain.classy

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Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:27 am

captain.classy says... · Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:27 am

Nate wrote:EDIT
Here's an interesting statistic: A little more than 50% of all reviews thus far in June 2010 were made by YWSers who have been members for at least eight months. Only 14% of reviews were made by YWSers who have been a member for a month or less. YWSers who have been members for at least a year wrote 40% of all reviews.

That is interesting. It's sad, but then cool at the same time... I don't know what I'm saying. Thanks Nate!

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Mr.Knightley

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Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:35 am

Mr.Knightley says... · Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:35 am

Cool! YWS keeps getting better! (Heh, Christina Aguilera, hehe) *fails*

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Nate

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Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:12 am

Nate says... · Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:12 am

captain.classy wrote:
Nate wrote:EDIT
Here's an interesting statistic: A little more than 50% of all reviews thus far in June 2010 were made by YWSers who have been members for at least eight months. Only 14% of reviews were made by YWSers who have been a member for a month or less. YWSers who have been members for at least a year wrote 40% of all reviews.

That is interesting. It's sad, but then cool at the same time... I don't know what I'm saying. Thanks Nate!

Haha, I do know what you mean. It's cool that old members continue to contribute in such a huge and meaningful way, but it's also sad that new members aren't reviewing as much. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to go about fixing that. In the past, we had the pay to post system that somewhat enforced a 2:1 review to work ratio, but all it really did was keep the number of literary works down.

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