[First filed: January 01, 2009 @ 11:45]

And so. Here we all are, a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and there’s vastly more of you than before. That’s mostly a good thing.
In this article we’ll be having a look at 2008’s visitor statistics to RiotACT as well as what were the most popular things on the site. Long time readers know it can be a bit of fun.
For those looking at the blip in the 2008 numbers during March it was caused by a web-monkey neglecting to carry over the tracking code in the website revamp. So the already excellent numbers were actually a smidge better than what we’ve got.
So here are the key stats:
Visits: 1,162,723, up from 734,003.
Pageviews: 3,412,883, up from 2,092,909.
Absolute Unique Visitors: 387,159, up from 217,762.
The most popular category was “Law and Justice”, head and shoulders above the runner up of “Politics”.
The 20 most popular stories through the year were:
- DFO Canberra Launches!!
- New DFO Fyshwick will make airport seem “Brand Depleted”
- Building collapse in Civic
- Google Street View – Canberra on the map
- Murder most foul in Charnwood
- 15y/o Girl dies in a Conder car crash
- Canberra Christmas lights 2008 – mapped.
- DFO Canberra opens on Friday
- Tess Ryan answers your questions
- Double murder in Downer
- Best Restaurants In Canberra
- Worst Canberra Restaurants
- Canberra most haunted?
- Canberra’s Best & Worst Bars
- Does anybody know when the DFO in Fyshwick is going to open?
- “Free Tibet” skywriter above the Torch Relay this morning
- Where’s the best place to buy fireworks this weekend ?
- Free TV…Free TV…Free TV…?
- Top Secret military “bases” in Canberra
- A customer complaint at The Front
On the one hand I wonder what we’re going to do without a pending DFO to talk about. On the other hand I have a great deal of faith in Canberrans capacity to come up with something new to entertain. And then there’s always Queanbeyan.
And now the bit to get Canberra’s chattering classes doing their thing. The top 100 search terms that brought traffic to RiotACT in 2009. Some might take it as a list of which things and people the public were most interested in. So here we go:
- riot act
- riotact
- the riot act
- dfo canberra
- riot act canberra
- the riotact
- riotact canberra
- www.the-riotact.com
- riot-act
- the riot act canberra
- the riot-act
- dfo fyshwick
- peter leonard
- alistair coe
- the-riotact.com
- mark parton
- crusty demons
- pasquale barbaro
- the-riotact
- anu singh
- kenja
- dfo
- fireworks canberra
- summernats
- massage canberra
- riot+act
- canberra airport
- hilary penfold
- limestone lizzy
- nyssa76 anissa
- canberra christmas lights
- jessica wright
- riot act act
- hill climb data for cyclists black mountain canberra
- corinbank
- christmas lights canberra
- todd carney
- tania tominac
- alto
- ginger and spice gungahlin
- flint restaurant
- taxi canberra
- impact records
- canberra cabs
- grapevine voip
- canberra dfo
- wanniassa medical centre
- canberra computer fair
- graham potts
- helen volmari
- fraser court
- tralee
- cranky
- “the crooked fiddle band” “merry muse” august 2008
- foskey staffer roland
- act computer fairs 2008
- central cafe gungahlin
- poachers pantry
- chester
- freetv
- www.the-riotact.com.au
- paintball canberra
- tonk system addict review
- norvan vogt
- wasabi manuka
- canberra fireworks
- charcoal restaurant canberra
- wasabi dickson
- video ezy
- griffith vietnamese
- lanterne rooms
- danman
- dickson noodle house
- canberra long-term parking
- car+accident+on+majura
- ha ha bar belconnen
- haunted canberra
- “clea rose”+alcohol
- amber jane westin
- gershon report
- mulcahy
- canberra charcoal restaurant
- scott alexander mcdougall
- brand depot canberra
- canberra underground bunkers
- zed seselja
- kramer site:the-riotact.com
- phillip medical centre
- what to eat in dickson
- aussie junk
- amazing canberra race
- “lincoln hawkins”
- contented soul act
- mee sushi
- clea rose
- richard mulcahy
- centrelink fraud
- mountain bike canberra august
- bootcamp in canberra
- erin molan
Just came across this topic, and imagine the suprise to discover the name popping up at about #53.
I’d love to know if its the wretched local Labor Party, checking to see if I’m still banging on about the money they owe for the Hettinger campaign material supplied but never paid for.
All Sonic and Co’s exhortations to talk up the economy come to nought when they refuse to pay their own bills.
I’m not going away, and if I can make you feel inclined to pay your bills, I will be happy.
Skidbladnir said :
maybe they read RA?
Actually, I just clicked my own link, they seem to have drastically updated their content (and stopped all of their old links from 404-ing) since last time I looked.
Compare http://www.dfo.com.au/canberra to http://www.branddepot.com.au
Having a placeholder page isn’t really the same as being able to say “We have an online presence.”
Skidbladnir said :
try the website: http://www.dfo.com.au/canberra/
strange that I found it straight away…
* but not enough *
I still don’t get #54. I use double quotes to look for strings of words, but enough to get that high in the charts, and I find it so hard to believe others would mystically choose that same sequence. Bee-zaar.
Skidbladnir said :
What’s scary about it? I won’t bother to attempt to guess the URL if I’m at a machine that doesn’t have it bookmarked lest I end up trying http://www.riotact.com, http://www.theriotact.org, http://www.riotact.com.au, http://www.the-riotact.net.au or any of the other dozens of possible permutations
Much easier to let Firefox do an “I’m feeling lucky” Google search from the address bar.
Skidbladnir said :
I know exactly how to use an address bar and I’m probably responsible for many of the http://www.the-riotact.com hits mentioned above. Why would that be? Neatest correct entry on a stamped, self-addressed envelope, Skid. Use the force and see if you can work it out.
Woohoo! #87 on the stalker list, but they’ll never find me in my new RiotACT (TM) bunker. I guess all those episodes of Burn Notice actually paid off and I wasn’t really paranoid.
BTW – Stalkers, you may know who I am, but I manage the server logs, so I do know who you are 😀
BTW2 – unless you surf thru a web proxy… Doh!
#8,9,10 – ditto. Well done JB
I am depressed – no stalking for roughly 2 years. When did our Deb shift?
Number 21 was election night coverage.
Also don’t try and draw too many conclusions from stats in isolation.
A subject that we write 100 stories about for 10,000 page views would come up lower in a top list than one story getting 1,000 page views on a one-off topic.
Also these stats don’t really take in the front page browsers who get everything they need without clicking in to the story.
It is interesting that the ACT government/election/candidates don’t appear in the top 20 most popular stories. That tells you something.
If my ploy works, and Nyssa and co get a cut of the free beer, I’m going to set up the computer to do LOTS of searches for me next month!
That 11 of the top 15 hits are from people who obviously don’t know how to use an address bar scares me.
2 Are from people trying to find out about DFO (who still don’t seem to have an online presence, but RiotACT gets a reasonable pagerank for it).
Of note:
Hilary Penfold (#28) is slightly more popular than Limestone Lizzy(#29).
Norvan Vogt(#64) scores better with the Googling electorate than Zed Seslja(#86)
Pommy bastard said :
+1
I agree with PB ^^^
Thanks to John, and all those who enable this excellent resource to be available to us.
Thanks JB. I think I was a still a little out of it from being on the phone from 2:30am until 8am.
ant, I’ll take the free beer with an official RiotAct stubbie holder 🙂
I reckon the people who are coming up as search terms are attracting people to the site! Therefore, Nyssa and Danman and Chester should be entitled to a cut of the free beer, and possibly a special T shirt too. With “official RiotAct conent” on it or soemthing.