Some Numbers
It's kind of an open secret
that on the Web many are launched but few stick around. The average
life expectancy of a new website is difficult to estimate, but the
numbers most often cited are surprisingly low. Alexa Internet
(Amazon's Web traffic compiler) once claimed that Web pages
"disappear after an average time of 75 days." Rick Weiss, in a 2003
article for the Washington Post, put the average lifespan of
a typical Web page at 100 days. And Brewster Kahle, the visionary
who created the library of the Web (www.archive.org),
famously claimed "estimates put the average lifetime for a URL (web
address) at 44 days."
PreserveRamapo.org is just about two
months short of its seventh year online. In 2005, the first year
that statistics were kept, the number of visits for the month of
January was a meager 68. The total number of visits in the most
recent month, March 2010, was 47,982. The recent average for weekly
traffic has been holding in a five-figure range.
What's a Visit? What's a Hit?
Two critical measures of Web traffic are the number of visitors and
the average number of page views per visitor. There are two kinds of
visitor numbers—visitors (including those who are repeat visitors
who are counted each time they open a session) and unique visitors,
who are counted only once within the period of time measured. Hits
are also kept, and sometimes cited as a measure of traffic. But hits
are not a very accurate measure, because they count each click of
the mouse, including multiple clicks on a page for images, links,
definitions, etc.
The current totals for
www.PreserveRamapo.org at the
end of last week (March 3, 2010), counted from January 2005, are:
Visits
(including those who come on more than once in a week)--1,005,545;
Total hits--5,147,302
over the seven years.
We do watch on the weekly reports what
the traffic is like for individual stories, but these are not kept
on the spreadsheet archive.
With a Lot of Help from Our Friends
A primary source of information for us
and for all of Rockland County has been The Journal News. The
reporters and editorial staff provide the most consistent and
comprehensive reporting despite the economic difficulties they share
with most other modern newspapers—from the Times Herald to
The New York Times.
Thanks also is due our readers. They
have not only exhibited the loyalty that has produced a stable and
growing list of subscribers, but many have also become sources of
information and suggested areas for investigation. And for anyone
else who has heard or seen something that you think should be looked
into, send the information along to
pr.webmaster@gmail.com. If you're more comfortable
remaining anonymous, that's not a problem.
Michael Castelluccio
www.PreserveRamapo.org
If you would like to be added
to our email list and receive updates on the articles posted on the
site, send your email address to
pr.webmaster@gmail.com
1,000,000
Visits