Why the Spike in Site Hits?

[Stephen]

Normally I can explain a huge spike in hits on ISD's site, but last Friday's 91 hits (compared to an average of 18-25) is weird. There was no new issue that day, no big event the day before, no nothing.

No, it was not due to people spending more time on the site or looking at more pages. Our counters are very reliable and only count visitors per two hour period... so you can stay on for two hours and visit fifty pages of the site and still only get counted as one hit.

Any explanation? Might some search engines have been scanning that day or something? A hacker or something?

[albpilot]

Maybe everyone is downloading the Ace List?

[Stephen]

I wish! But there aren't 91 people in the society right now, are there?

[joseki]

Hmmm friday I think thats when I got the link to your site working...


Oh and if you believe that story I have this bridge...

[Stephen]

Well SOMETHING did it, for pete's sake. I figure the 52-hit spike we got last weds was related to several things that I can identify, but the 91 hits last Friday is still a mystery.

[kirkh]

I can't explain it for other people, but for some reason something told me about a week and a half ago to check in on the forum again after not being here for a long time. I saw the new activity surrounding VDP and it got me all pumped up that this time might be the time it takes off. I think all the activity surrounding the Red Baron meet plus all the new VDP interest is probably the reason.

[Stephen]

Yes, but I can usually predict those spikes and explain them. But 91 hits? And they're genuine, too. Our site counter does not count PAGE hits, only site hits... and then only when they're separated by two hrs or more. So our counter is very, very strict... designed to truly track individual visitors' hits and not simply generate big numbers.

ISD readership has really been exploding lately. RBF was obviously part of it, but its bigger than that. VDP is also a good bit of it, plus the additional exposure we're getting now from the web ring, which has had a big impact.

My barometer is 75 - the approx. number of players in the society. If we get 75 hits per day, that means that (the equivalent of) every person who regularly plays this game hits our site every day. That, to me, would be the maximum we could ever hope for.

With that in mind, we started with about 6 hits per day just a few years back. I was happy with that because that was the approx number of people in the Indy Squadron - our primary audience. Then it jumped to 9 after adding the SOCIETY RESOURCES section. Then we slowly built toward 12-15 hits per day until adding the web ring link. That put us over 20 per day.

Now the spring mini con, VDP and RBF have combined to put us way over 30 per day, with spikes from 50-90 hits. That really sorta freaked me out since that is beyond my wildest expectations.

[Stephen]

BTW, weekends are a real barometer on their own. Anything over 10 hits on a Sat or Sun is big because everyone is away from their puter. Last weekend we have 56 total hits.

[Rex]

Looking at the stats there are a lot of unique visitors and a huge amount of first time visitors. Which is great.

I put the website address out on the Vassal site, the DP yahoo group, and on board game geeks forums, and even in the messages section on the vassal game server, so those might be pulling in some of the new people.

Maybe there are more people out there looking for Dawn patrol info than we might expect.

-Rex