4 January 2009

State of the Riot - 2008

| johnboy
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[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:

  1. DFO Canberra Launches!!
  2. New DFO Fyshwick will make airport seem “Brand Depleted”
  3. Building collapse in Civic
  4. Google Street View – Canberra on the map
  5. Murder most foul in Charnwood
  6. 15y/o Girl dies in a Conder car crash
  7. Canberra Christmas lights 2008 – mapped.
  8. DFO Canberra opens on Friday
  9. Tess Ryan answers your questions
  10. Double murder in Downer
  11. Best Restaurants In Canberra
  12. Worst Canberra Restaurants
  13. Canberra most haunted?
  14. Canberra’s Best & Worst Bars
  15. Does anybody know when the DFO in Fyshwick is going to open?
  16. “Free Tibet” skywriter above the Torch Relay this morning
  17. Where’s the best place to buy fireworks this weekend ?
  18. Free TV…Free TV…Free TV…?
  19. Top Secret military “bases” in Canberra
  20. 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:

  1. riot act
  2. riotact
  3. the riot act
  4. dfo canberra
  5. riot act canberra
  6. the riotact
  7. riotact canberra
  8. www.the-riotact.com
  9. riot-act
  10. the riot act canberra
  11. the riot-act
  12. dfo fyshwick
  13. peter leonard
  14. alistair coe
  15. the-riotact.com
  16. mark parton
  17. crusty demons
  18. pasquale barbaro
  19. the-riotact
  20. anu singh
  21. kenja
  22. dfo
  23. fireworks canberra
  24. summernats
  25. massage canberra
  26. riot+act
  27. canberra airport
  28. hilary penfold
  29. limestone lizzy
  30. nyssa76 anissa
  31. canberra christmas lights
  32. jessica wright
  33. riot act act
  34. hill climb data for cyclists black mountain canberra
  35. corinbank
  36. christmas lights canberra
  37. todd carney
  38. tania tominac
  39. alto
  40. ginger and spice gungahlin
  41. flint restaurant
  42. taxi canberra
  43. impact records
  44. canberra cabs
  45. grapevine voip
  46. canberra dfo
  47. wanniassa medical centre
  48. canberra computer fair
  49. graham potts
  50. helen volmari
  51. fraser court
  52. tralee
  53. cranky
  54. “the crooked fiddle band” “merry muse” august 2008
  55. foskey staffer roland
  56. act computer fairs 2008
  57. central cafe gungahlin
  58. poachers pantry
  59. chester
  60. freetv
  61. www.the-riotact.com.au
  62. paintball canberra
  63. tonk system addict review
  64. norvan vogt
  65. wasabi manuka
  66. canberra fireworks
  67. charcoal restaurant canberra
  68. wasabi dickson
  69. video ezy
  70. griffith vietnamese
  71. lanterne rooms
  72. danman
  73. dickson noodle house
  74. canberra long-term parking
  75. car+accident+on+majura
  76. ha ha bar belconnen
  77. haunted canberra
  78. “clea rose”+alcohol
  79. amber jane westin
  80. gershon report
  81. mulcahy
  82. canberra charcoal restaurant
  83. scott alexander mcdougall
  84. brand depot canberra
  85. canberra underground bunkers
  86. zed seselja
  87. kramer site:the-riotact.com
  88. phillip medical centre
  89. what to eat in dickson
  90. aussie junk
  91. amazing canberra race
  92. “lincoln hawkins”
  93. contented soul act
  94. mee sushi
  95. clea rose
  96. richard mulcahy
  97. centrelink fraud
  98. mountain bike canberra august
  99. bootcamp in canberra
  100. erin molan

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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 :

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.

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.

try the website: http://www.dfo.com.au/canberra/

strange that I found it straight away…

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 :

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)

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 :

That 11 of the top 15 hits are from people who obviously don’t know how to use an address bar scares me.

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 :

That 11 of the top 15 hits are from people who obviously don’t know how to use an address bar scares me.

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!

barking toad1:35 pm 02 Jan 09

#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 :

Thanks to John, and all those who enable this excellent resource to be available to us.

+1

I agree with PB ^^^

Pommy bastard3:54 pm 01 Jan 09

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.

72nd most popular search on RA for the year – hmmm I’m either famous or the opposite 🙂

What I’m seeing is that people in Canberra use the internet to find places to eat.

nyssa76 said :

Dammit. My stalker’s back. I made the list….#30ish……sad, sad, sad.

It’s an annual list Nyssa, you’re seeing the results of their earlier work.

tylersmayhem12:57 pm 01 Jan 09

Very worrying Nyssa 😉

Dammit. My stalker’s back. I made the list….#30ish……sad, sad, sad.

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