Monthly Report for April 2011

In April, Politics Plus ran well behind March’s record setting performance.  We can’t be stars every month, and it was still a good solid month.

Here are our basic stats:

Here is our most recent Clustrmap, last updated on April 28.

Our Clustrmap reset the morning of 2/28, starting over from scratch, so the above map represents just two months’ traffic. The largest circles represent over 1,000 visits.  The tiniest represent one to ten.

Our durations were up from 170 seconds last month:

Number of visits: 35721 – Average: 183 s	Number of visits	Percent
0s-30s	29402	82.3 %
30s-2mn	1797	5 %
2mn-5mn	1123	3.1 %
5mn-15mn	1177	3.2 %
15mn-30mn	794	2.2 %
30mn-1h	815	2.2 %
1h+	486	1.3 %
Unknown	127	0.3 %

That’s expected, because we also had fewer drive-by visitors.

Search engine referrals fell somewhat.

20 different referring search engines	Pages	Percent	Hits	Percent
Stumbleupon (Social Bookmark)	10517	71.9 %	16137	71.3 %
Google	3344	22.8 %	5458	24.1 %
Microsoft MSN Search	361	2.4 %	361	1.5 %
Yahoo!	110	0.7 %	145	0.6 %
Microsoft Bing	78	0.5 %	149	0.6 %
Microsoft Windows Live	44	0.3 %	152	0.6 %
Google (Images)	40	0.2 %	60	0.2 %
Unknown search engines	33	0.2 %	33	0.1 %
AOL	27	0.1 %	27	0.1 %
Ask	22	0.1 %	22	0 %
Digg (Social Bookmark)	19	0.1 %	40	0.1 %
MyWebSearch	3	0 %	5	0 %
Yandex	3	0 %	24	0.1 %
Earth Link	2	0 %	2	0 %
Dogpile	2	0 %	2	0 %
Scroogle	2	0 %	2	0 %
Searchalot	1	0 %	1	0 %
Virgilio	1	0 %	1	0 %
Kvasir	1	0 %	1	0 %
Go.com			1	0 %

Our top five non-blog referrers are:

http://www.reddit.com/ 6,900+

http://buzzflash.net/ 2,600+

http://www.facebook.com/ 2,100+

http://www.care2.com/ 2,000+

http://www.jabberwonk.com/ 1,100+

Our top 15 referrer blogs are:

http://america-weeps.blogspot.com/

http://parsleyspics.blogspot.com/

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/

http://annette-justmylittlepieceoftheworld.blogspot.com/

http://republic-of-gilead.blogspot.com/

http://whohijackedourcountry.blogspot.com/

http://blogagainsttheocracy.blogspot.com/

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/

http://www.jackjodell.blogspot.com/

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/

http://reconstitution.us/rcnew/

http://jbm479.blogspot.com/

http://katieschwartz.com/

http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/

http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/

http://carolinaparrothead.blogspot.com/

http://freakoutnation.com/

There are two extra due to a three way tie for 15th.  There’s some linkey-love in return  The best ways you can publicize Politics Plus is to use the share button at the bottom of each post to list our articles on the the sites where you belong, and to quote PP articles on your own blogs.  The operative commandment here is “thou shalt steal.”  We’re on the same side here, so I won’t mind.  Even if you want to repost a whole article, that’s OK.  Just link back, please.  Also, feel free to swipe the graphics.

We have a new feature occasioned by a new plugin.  Our top 10 commenters are:

Jerry Critter (66)

TWM (61)

Lisa G. (54)

SoINeedAName (47)

Patty (31)

Jack Jodell (27)

Phyllis (21)

Jack Jodell53 (18)

Blue (17)

Zada Shindelar (16)

tnlib (14)

The widget is in the right column.  I don’t count, as I’m the resident big mouth.  Those who leave their URLs in their comments, get linkey love.  The extra one is because Pope Jack hasn’t decided who he is. 😉

Technorati was even stranger last month.  Our global authority is up, but politics is down, US politics is down, and they stopped rating us on World.  Sadly, we’re back to the B list.  I still have absolutely no idea why.

• Global 467 (rank 3,566)
• US politics 473 (rank 282)
• Politics 456 (rank 506)

We have 376,576 links on other websites, well up from 289,640 last month.

We have 2,258 posts and 17,197 comments, as of midnight 5/1.

We have new wacky avatars, and I’ll change them each month, but I recommend your own avatar. Go to Gravatar.  Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use.  Whenever you comment under that e mail address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that will be your avatar.

After the stunning numbers last month, this month’s  decrease surprise.  We did not have a viral article. Things often drop off at the beginning of Spring, and I trust this month will be better.  Your participation is what makes this blog worth reading, not to mention worth writing.  Thank you all for all you do.