City County Observer Smashes Weekly Internet Traffic Records: 1 Million Visits Projected for 2011

City County Observer Smashes Weekly Internet Traffic Records

On October 16, 2010 the City County Observer started tracking its internet traffic using an available 3rd party program called Google Analytics. The first quarter of tracking will end this week and we are confident that the trailing quarter’s numbers will reflect that we attracted 100,000 pageviews from 35,000 visits, 12,000 of which have been unique.

The first full week of January in 2011 presented some conditions in the marketplace that the CCO was prepared to take full advantage of to drive traffic to a new level. During that week internet traffic records were set on every day of the week with one day being marked by traffic spiking so high that our server crashed. In spite of the crash keeping the site down for 4 hours it was another record day. Last week Google Analytics recorded 15,031pageviews and 4,920 visits from 2,698 unique visitors. More importantly the average time on site increased by 25% to a full 4 minutes and 22 seconds per visit.

The CCO has now had visits from all 50 states and 59 countries. Over 80% of our following continues to be in the Evansville region but we do enjoy extensive readership from New York, Indianapolis, Houston, Austin, Chicago, Louisville, Atlanta, Washington DC, and a growing following in both the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley areas of California.

The traffic is surprisingly balanced by source with referrals now leading with 40.9%, followed by direct access at 33.2%, and finally search engine referrals at 25.9%.

What does 2011 look like?

With the launch of our “good news” paper and the fortunate situations that a local election year will provide we have set an achievable goal to record 1,000,000 pageviews during CY 2011. We expect that this will come from about 350,000 visits from 150,000 unique visitors. This will require about 30% growth on average from our record week but we have already enjoyed over 100% growth since the 2010 elections.

We are dedicated to the concept that content drives traffic, a lesson that we have taken to heart after seeing our traffic increase substantially by publishing IS IT TRUE on every weekday. We will continue to bring new authors on board, to generate provocative original content, and to do as a local publisher recently opined “show the courage to ask the questions and publish the content that take more courage than local media has been willing to muster”.

We look forward to serving the Evansville region in 2011 and to do what we believe is right cajole, shame, or even inspire local government to implement and practice good public policy.