March stats fest, 2010

Visits to the site continue to rise with 5,020 visits this month; a 27% increase on last month and an indication that the site has more than doubled in popularity since the start of 2010.

Page views are up to 20,463 from 18,731 and unique visitor numbers are dramatically up from 872 to 1525.

The 2nd and 16th were the busiest days with 1076 and 1083 page views respectively. This points to the Cllr Ron Bell let-off story as being one of the most read as well as the unfortunate story of Kieran Whitfield. Every time there is a Ron Bell article, hits come in from the Houses of Parliament so there must be a Google Alert set up by someone there (Mr Marsden perhaps).

Talking of Ron Bell, there was a bizarre search that led one person to the site: “ron bell” sex.

A few Johnston Press hits come in now and again, as do hits from Blackpool Council and Lancashire County Council. Don’t worry, I can’t tell who you are, but thanks for visiting anyway

I don’t tend to get a lot of referrals as the site isn’t linked in many places. Google supplied the most referrals to the site, driving 50.5% of visitors here, and the next site was, perhaps strangely, blackpool-libdems.org.uk who linked one of my articles a while back. They drove 2.27% of traffic here whilst another 1.83% came from Facebook (probably in relation to the Darrell Pierre story). Small trickles of visitors were also referred by liveinblackpool.co.uk, Twitter and Yahoo. 34% of visitors simply typed the URL directly in in order to visit, or used a bookmark/favourites link.

Popular searches, in no particular order, included “bill lewtas”, “integrity .uk party”, “integrity party blackpool”, “integrity uk party” (bit of a running theme here I know), “blackpool first alliance”, “boxer scaffolding”, “penny martin labour”, “paul maynard blackpool blog” and again “blackpool nurse nhs true blackpudlian” which shows that TB’s Wyre Borough Council fan club are still stalking him. The most popular search was of course “philtheone”.

Most visitors come directly to the homepage, but the most popular content was Shared space creates crime according to cabbie, Integrity UK, Fylde Community Radio: Election Special, Bell unpunished as Kensington promise even more donations, and Blackpool Lib Dem PPCs revealed.

Growth continues at a steady pace and I am very pleased to maintain a dedicated following of all political alignments. As ever, feel free to spread the word about the site and if you have any suggestions or gossip feel free to let me know about it.