Roger Clarke’s Web-Site Statistics © Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd,  1995-2024
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I launched this site in mid-February 1995, when the Web was still pretty young.
The cumulative hit-count passed 70 million during 2023. Hits are currently running at around 2.5-3.0 million p.a. (Real measure: a page is landed on by a real person about every 30 seconds).

On the basis of an analysis a few years ago, the split of hits across the c. 2500 pages in the various segments within the site was then roughly as follows:

• 40% to c. 800 pages on eBusiness (EC), info infrastructure (II) and identity (ID) (previously >50%)
• 15% to c. 500 pages on dataveillance and privacy (DV) (previously >35% )
• 10% to c. 250 pages in the 'other papers' segment (SOS)
• 10% to c. 30 central and navigation pages (home, What's New, Site Search, etc.)
• 25% to personal directories (Family, the Bunhybee and Southwater Downs properties, and the Gallery, plus Waltzing Matilda – WM)

Details

The cumulative hit-count of over 70 million Feb 1995 to 31 Dec 2023 comprised:

• 2.7m in 2023
• 2.3m in 2022
• 2.8m in 2021
• 3.2m in 2020
• 2.7m in 2019 – Webstats
• 2.7m in 2018 (statistical reporting mucked up by a switch of hosting service from SublimeIP to VentraIP), incl. Webstats
• 2.6m in 2017
• 2.8m in 2016 – Webstats
• 3.3m in 2015 – Webstats
  The 24% collapse, sliding a further 12% the year after, appears to reflect the sudden switch of the user-base to Web 2.0 mentality, i.e. capitulation to commercial interests.
  A further complication: An extra c.1.7m hits in Jan-Feb 2015, above and beyond the 3.3m, were caused by a Googlebotbug.
  It generated spurious calls for non-existent files (presumably a parser error processing pathnames on websites in Google's master-file)
• 4.36m in 2014 – Webstats
• 4.0m in 2013 (of which robots are maybe a bit over one-third of hits and real people a bit under two-thirds):
• 3.2m in 2Q-4Q 2013, after switching to SublimeIP – who offer WebStats
• 0.8m in 1Q 2013, while using Infinite:
  • Webalizer (including robots, which accounted for 35-45% of hits)
  • AWStats – Summary and List of URLs (excluding robots)
• 3.0m in 2012, reported on using:
  • Webalizer (including robots, which appeared to be exactly 40% of hits)
  • AWStats – Summary and List of URLs (excluding robots). These show 634,000 human page-downloads,
    277,000 visits (low 'stickiness' – 2.3 pages per visit), from 200,000 unique visitors, i.e. 77,000 were re-visits.
    So about 1,750 page-downloads per day, or justabout 1 every 2 seconds on average over the year
• 3.2m in 2011, reported on using:
  • Webalizer (including robots, which appear to be close to 40% of hits)
  • AWStats – Summary and List of URLs (excluding robots)
• 3.5m in 2010, reported on using:
  • Webalizer (partial only, and it doesn't differentiate people from robots)
  • AWStats – Summary and List of URLs
• 3.2m in 2009, comprising 0.36m to 9 Feb, and 2.82m after moving home.
  The reason for the apparent 25% drop in the hit-rate is explained below
  Also AWStats File-Hits for 89% of the year, showing each file's total non-webcrawler hits
  Also AWStats Summary for 89% of the year
• 4.25 million in 2008 (the peak, to date)
• 3.2m in 2007 (I never did work out why it dropped – probably server problems)
• 3.6m in 2006
• 3.2m in 2005
• 2.7m in 2004
• 2.4m in 2003
• 2.3m in 2002 (Here are the Stats for 1995-2002)
• 2.0m in 2001
• 1.6m in 2000
• 1.0m in 1999
• 500,000 in 1998
• 300,000 in 1997
• 200,000 in 1996
• 100,000 in 1994-95

During 2008, a rough indicator of daily activity was 9-13,000 hits, resulting from 500-2,000 visits, by people in 60-80 different countries, hitting about 800-1,000 separate pages.

Last time I looked (quite some time ago), it appeared that between 10,000 and 20,000 pages linked to pages on this site. That's not too bad for one person's narrowly specialised and little-advertised publications. (But I switched hosting from the ANU to the rogerclarke.com domain in February 2009, so some old links could still be depending on the redirects I put into place).

A perusal of AWStats suggests that direct hits (i.e. from emails) may remain the largest source, but with very large numbers of referrals from search-engines, primarily Google, and hits from embedded links in other sites:

• the sources of hits in 2009 and 2010 were:
  • 55-60% direct – but only 48% in 2011
  • 10-15% links from other sites (other than search-engines) – 18% in 2011
  • 20-25% links from Google search-engine(s) – 33% in 2011
  • 5-10% links from other search-engines (mainlyYahoo, ahead of Ask, AOL and MS) – down to 2% in 2011
• only 61% of hits were by people – 71% in 2010, 60% in 2011 (whereas my guess had been 80%)
• page-hits were 40-50% of the total hits (i.e. 50-55% were embedded images and similar)
• there were only 2.4 hits per visit (implying that many visitors arrive and leave) – 2.7 in 2010, 2.0 in 2011

The Fiasco of 20 January 2009

This is a story of bouquets and brickbats. Commencing in August 1994, the ANU's IT Services Group hosted this site, and hosted it generally very well. (I was a full-time academic at the ANU 1984-95, and have been a Visiting Fellow, later Visiting Professor, since then).

In late January 2009, I was out of Internet range (walking in the mountains of Tasmania). As a result of an ANU blunder, the site went off-air on 20 Jan 2009. (ANU IT Services had given webmasters of other sites on that server several months' notice that the server was being de-commissioned, but failed to tell the server's biggest user, me). I was unaware of the failure for almost a week, until I was in the lounge at Hobart airport on the way home. As a result of being off-air for a week, the site disappeared entirely out of Google's search-index, and the Google PageRank of 6 was lost.

The ANU accepted that they had to restore the service for a sufficient period to enable conversion and transfer to a new server, and it was available again from 27 Jan 2009; but they gave me short notice to shift the site to a differently-configured service. I had long complained about the ANU's appalling policy that, when a Visiting Professor's appointment expires, support for their web-site is withdrawn, and withdrawn immediately. I therefore chose to move the site to a location where I could be confident about both the level of service and the site's longevity.

I had previously acquired the domains rogerclarke.com and rogerclarke.com.au, but had not made any other plans for a move that I'd assumed was still some years away. During the period 27 Jan to 9 Feb, I had to seek out a suitable ISP, plan and execute the conversion of over a thousand files in varying formats and developed using several generations of templates, run up the new site, install redirects at the ANU site, and re-launch it.

As a result of the ANU blunder:

• 100,000 hits went missing during the 7 days it was off the air and the following 12 days of uncertainty
• even after it was moved, the hit-rate collapsed from an average of 11,500 per day to about 6,000.

It gradually recovered, and several weeks after re-launch, the Google PageRank was back to its previous score of 6.

By the end of 2009, the site was again averaging close to 9,000 hits per day.

To be fair, full recovery was never likely. The ANU was one of the earliest movers in the Web world (as documented in Clarke 2013), continues to offer a great deal of material, and has a Page Rank of 8. So part of the reason that my pages sorted so high in search-engine output was that my site had been benefiting from being a sub-site of the ANU's.

During 2009-13, I worked my way around various small ACT providers (Apex, Grapevine, Infinite), but all dropped short of the kind of professionalism I needed (for my measly c. $500 p.a.). I shifted to SublimeIP (sponsors of APF for over a decade) in March 2013. I moved to the more cost-effective and technically well-supported VentraIP service in August-September 2018.

The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax. From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. It passed 75 million in late 2024. Sponsored by the Gallery, Bunhybee Grasslands, the extended Clarke Family, Knights of the Spatchcock and their drummer

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Created: 15 February 1995 - Last Amended: 24 December 2023 by Roger Clarke - Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
This document is at www.rogerclarke.com/Stats.html
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