Saturday, November 04, 2006

October Figures for Iain Dale's Diary

October was what can politely be described as a 'consolidation month' with unique visitors and reloads down on September. Uniques were at 153,000 and page downloads at 253,000. Admittedly I have not posted so much in October because of the new job, so I'd better ramp things up again this month!

Here are my top 36 link sites (ie incoming hits) for October. All thes sites referred at least 100 people here. The arrows denote whether a site has moved up or down or stayed static since September.

1. Guido Fawkes 16.73% ↔ 2. ConservativeHome 8.87% ↔ 3. PoliticalBetting 7.22% ↔ 4. Little Green Footballs 3% NEW 4. Web Cameron 2.78% ↑ 5. Biased BBC 1.58% NEW 6. National Review Corner ↓ 7. W4MP ↑ 8. Croydonian ↑ 9. Recess Monkey ↓ 10. Daniel Finkelstein ↓ 11. Paul Linford ↓ 12. Blairwatch ↓ 13. Looking for a Voice 14. Witanagemot ↑ 15. Archbishop Cranmer ↑ 16. An Englishman's Castle ↓ 17. Prague Tory ↓ 18. Daily Pundit ↑ 19. EU Referendum ↓ 20. Cally’s Kitchen ↑ 21. Injured Cyclist ↓ 22. Mikey's Tent of Reality ↓ 23. Liberal England ↓ 24. Bob Piper ↓ 25. Hoby Cartoons NEW 26. Mr Eugenides ↑ 27. Campaign for an English Parliament ↑ 28. Mars Hill ↑ 29. Dizzy Thinks ↓ 30. Public Interest ↓ 31. Clive Davis ↓ 32. Antonia Bance NEW 33. Adam Smith Institute NEW 34. Devil's Kitchen NEW 34. 18DoughtyStreet.com NEW 35. Bryan Appleyard NEW 36. Ellee Seymour

All these sites dropped out of the list as they referred fewer than 100 visitors last month.

NHS Blog Doctor, Rightlinks, Bloggerheads, Cynical Chatter, Drinking from Home, Rachel North London, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, The Spine, Fair Deal Phil, Chicken Yoghurt, Bel is Thinking, Slugger O’Toole , Kiwiblog, Stumbling & Mumbling, Suz Blog, Labour Watch, Iain Lindley.

If I've got any of these links wrong, let me know in Comments.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I could have guessed this. I used to come every day, now it's once a week. The reason? All the guff for 18 Doughty Street. Am sick of it and suspect many others are.

Iain Dale said...

Well, that's as may be. This is after all a diary, and if I'm spending 12-15 hours a day working there it is hardly surprising I will write about it from time to time, is it? I've looked back over the last week or so and out of 42 posts only 4 have been about my work at 18DS. The main reason for the reduction I suspect is that there has been no great political story and I haven't been posting quite as often.

Praguetory said...

I don't see what anyone has to complain about. It's not like there's a lot of effort involved in clicking onto another site. I'm fascinated how Little Green Footballs made a new entry at 4. I can't even see a link to you from their site. Top 10 from Croydonian indicates cream rising to the top. Good to see that can happen without the author being a media whore.

Johnny Norfolk said...

Dear Iain

i think you have done a great job with your site and 18DS is a step in the right direction, but you are now in danger of becoming just another establishment figure, if thats what you want its fine by me, but you will have more flack comming your way if you are seen to be drawn in to this very atractive media leftie/liberal world.
We want you firing from the hip and i am now detecting a little more caution being on the A list and all that, so pleae dont abandon us.

Archbishop Cranmer said...

His Grace is intrigued by this.

The link to Mr Dale's Diary from his august blog is top of the automated ranking. When Mr Dale features so prominently at No.1, and has done for months, it is not surprising that His Grace features in this list.

The intrigue is in how Mr Dale's Diary maintains its position on His Grace's blog. It appears that Cranmer receives a constant stream of visitors from here, yet the link is minuscule, buried in 'English and Eurosceptic' (despite being placed by Mr Dale in the Top 10 Conservative blogs), and such obscurity cannot possibly account for the constant stream of referrals.

Any ideas?

Anonymous said...

Clearly, I have some work to do!

Jonathan Calder said...

Your link to Liberal England needs a little tweaking...

James Higham said...

Iain, have you considered that referrals aren't everything? You are first port of call for many people, who then go on to other sites. Therefore it works the other way. In other words, you're doing a public service.

Anonymous said...

I would like to second Praguetories comment . Croydonian is the best at what it does by a long way. P`s itself is v good but is in teritory patrolled by the mighty Con HOme to some extent (?)

Paul Burgin said...

Iain, I think that's another Mars Hill blog you linked to there!
Either that or I have well and truly dropped off the radar!

Anonymous said...

I'm not surprised that your visitors are down either. There just isn't enough content any more so I visit less and less. 18 Doughty Street isn't of any interest to me and the diary site seems to be one long advert for it. Shame; it used to be a good read.

Anonymous said...

'
Sehr geEhrte Iain

I am glad for your 18 Doughty Street posts - they allow me to log into the programme, without requiring to undergo the humiliation of needing the services of an 8-year old child

Alles Gute

G E

What I am not grateful for is the absence of any help in locating the (in my case) vital Spell-checker on the firefox programme (apple mac)

Anonymous said...

October just seemed to be a bad month for blogs. My Authorsden site was well up (thanks to a little more effort on my part) but it was a struggle to get hits for the blogs. But it has been getting harder to maintain the upward trend for a few months.
Only possible reason I can think of is google have moved the goalposts again and "Web2" sites such as blogs, mysace pages etc. are finding it harder to avchierbe a good listing. Or maybe google haven't changed things and the web is just drowing in Web2 dross.

Anonymous said...

Hits are down all over the internet, for some strange reason. I simply conclude that any coming from here are Iain, who cannot do without a regular fix of Cthulhu-related, Canuckocentric news. Occam's razor, of course.

Praguetory said...

Like the ? Newmania. I've no idea what you're talking about either.

Anonymous said...

I suppose your blog is a bit like West Ham, isn't it? For months and months and months things are all great and everyone's talking about you and you're always moving up in the world, and then all of a sudden....

Anonymous said...

Praguetory-"This is not a political gossip site. This site's purpose is foremost to discuss policies and issues".

This was what I was refferring to.Silence , as so often , may have been a better policy.I have only just started reading your stuff .

Praguetory said...

Thanks for the tip, Newmania - I've certainly spoilt a good weekend with the DD campaign. I promise never to try to raise money on my site again.

Anonymous said...

Ian, i have been visiting your site for about 4 months and I have to agree that in the past month i have found the 18 Doughty Street stuff a bit tiresome.

You say that in the past week only 4 out of 42 stories have been 18DS. That may be so but without being inclined to do any research, i have to say my impression is that it has taken over the site since its launch.

I make this observation in good faith as i used to enjoy the diary and look forward to its return

Anonymous said...

Ian Thorpe is right as it happens. It seems that political blog traffic actually fell during the party conferences, perhaps because all the people who usually look at them (MPs, party activists, lobby hacks) were either too busy or away from their computers.

I do think some of the comments re 18 Doughty Street are rather unfair. It would be different if people who come to this blog expecting Iain to inform and entertain them were paying him for the privelege, but as they are not, he has to find some other way of earning a crust, and currently 18 Doughty Street is it. If as a result that has to take precedence sometimes over something which is essentially a hobby, then so be it.

I have exactly the same dilemma myself. The need to have a "day job" invariably limits the amount of blogging I can do on certain days. I would love it if blogging paid me a living and I could spend my working hours doing nothing else, but it doesn't, and as far as I can see it never will.

Anonymous said...

Just for the record, and in response to PragueTory's comment. I am media slut not a media whore. I am yet to progress to the heady heights of being paid to espouse utter drivel and nonsense. One day.. mark my words!