Monthly Report for May 2011

In May, Politics Plus ran well almost the same as April’s performance.  We still can’t be stars every month, and it was a good solid month.

Here are our basic stats:

Here is our most recent Clustrmap, last updated on May 19.

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 average durations were up from 183 seconds last month:

Number of visits: 38189 – Average: 195 s	Number of visits	Percent
0s-30s	31172	81.6 %
30s-2mn	2080	5.4 %
2mn-5mn	1316	3.4 %
5mn-15mn	1228	3.2 %
15mn-30mn	825	2.1 %
30mn-1h	1027	2.6 %
1h+	541	1.4 %

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

Search engine referrals were up slightly.

20 different referring search engines	Pages	Percent	Hits	Percent
Stumbleupon (Social Bookmark)	8801	58.7 %	13649	58.3 %
Google	4789	31.9 %	7998	34.2 %
Microsoft Bing	621	4.1 %	746	3.1 %
Microsoft MSN Search	403	2.6 %	403	1.7 %
Yahoo!	165	1.1 %	257	1 %
Google (Images)	59	0.3 %	113	0.4 %
Unknown search engines	35	0.2 %	36	0.1 %
AOL	27	0.1 %	27	0.1 %
Ask	27	0.1 %	27	0.1 %
Microsoft Windows Live	14	0 %	35	0.1 %
Digg (Social Bookmark)	12	0 %	33	0.1 %
MyWebSearch	6	0 %	18	0 %
GoodSearch	2	0 %	2	0 %
Yandex	2	0 %	26	0.1 %
Onet.pl	1	0 %	1	0 %
Dogpile	1	0 %	1	0 %
Kvasir	1	0 %	1	0 %
InfoSpace	1	0 %	1	0 %
ix quick	1	0 %	1	0 %
Netscape			2	0 %

Our top four non-blog referrers are:

http://www.reddit.com/          4,600+

http://www.buzzflash.net/      3,000+

http://www.care2.com/          1,600+

http://www.jabberwonk.com/    900+

Our top 15 blog referrers are:

http://crooksandliars.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

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://jackjodell53.wordpress.com/

http://jbm479.blogspot.com/

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/

http://katieschwartz.com/

http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/

http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/

http://okjimmseggrollemporium.blogspot.com/

Here’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 networking 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 don’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 in the articles.

We have a new feature occasioned by a new plugin.  Unfortunately I screwed the pooch on this one.  The old month’s data disappears at midnight sharp on the 1st, so it’s up to me to grab it on the night of the 31st.  I just plain forgot.  Mea culpa.  I remember that Princess Lisa G was leading the pack with Jerry, Nameless and Mark close on her heels.

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, or will if I can just remember this month.

Technorati remains a complete mystery to me.  Although, there is little to distinguish May from April, we’re solidly back on the A list. Our global authority, politics authority and US politics authority are all way up.  They started rating us for World (events) again.  I still have absolutely no idea why.

• Global 523 (rank 2,455)
• US politics 549 (rank 255)
• Politics 532 (rank 328)
• World 434 (rank 439)

We have 416,463 links on other websites, well up from 376,576 last month.

We have 2,380 posts and 18,192 comments, as of midnight 6/1.

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.

I had hoped for an increase from last month, but it’s springtime, and political blogs tend to slow down for the winter months in non-election years.  We did not have a viral article.  Your participation remains what makes this blog worth reading, not to mention worth writing.  Thank you all for all you do here.