Forum Growth.....or not?

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk,

Whern I was responsible for managing the web site content for a large firm, a couple of critical measures I used was pages viewed and average amount of time viewing individual pages.

Given the attention span of Internet "surfers", typically you can tell within 15 seconds or less whether the content is of interest, or not.

May not be relevant for this site, but worth every cent you it is costing you.

My $0.02 (Canadian),

Len

So combining numbers from my first post and the numbers Len requested above we get:


In January 2010:
Pages: 2,526,898
Average viewing time: 609 s

Threads: 51,598, Posts: 524,061, Members: 16,885, all to date---Active Members currently: 2,814


In June 2008
Pages 22,271,468 (that's what it says!)
Average viewing time: 524 s

Threads: 32,221, Posts: 340,521, Members: 13,693, all to date---Active Members at that date: 2,234

[lilmsmaggie]

So Kirk,

Based on your numbers, there has been a:

88.65% decrease in number of pages

16.22% increase in Average viewing time

25.96% increase in Active members at date

These are just quick and dirty observations. They may or may not be statistically valid.

I suppose the first number attributed to pages could represent culled, out of date or inactive content.

Viewing time could be interpreted in many ways, but could be attributed to more interesting or relevant content, etc., etc. Especially when seen with an increase in overal numbers of active members.

So methinks all in all, Len's observation of content that is of interest and is relevant seems quite valid.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks for that summary,

I added to the title of the thread "or not", reflecting that 22million pages number from 2008.

[Ed Richards]

That 22m number looks suspicious. Are the surrounding months that high? If you have a graph of pages by month, is there a sudden drop at some point, which could mean that the stat counter changed the way it counts? I do not know how spyders affect page time, but a herd of spyders could have run up the count in June 2008.

[lilmsmaggie]

That 22m number looks suspicious. Are the surrounding months that high? If you have a graph of pages by month, is there a sudden drop at some point, which could mean that the stat counter changed the way it counts? I do not know how spyders affect page time, but a herd of spyders could have run up the count in June 2008.

Spyders and other queries from search engines are only looking for keywords that appear in a pages header and/or page content. They don't increase or create the number of physical pages.

[Ed Richards]

The 22m is not pages, it is page views isn't it? But now that you bring it up, I wonder of the new number is pages and the old number is page views?

[Kirk Gittings]

Ed, I don't think so but will recheck tomorrow sometime.

[Oren Grad]

Spyders and other queries from search engines are only looking for keywords that appear in a pages header and/or page content. They don't increase or create the number of physical pages.

"Pages" in Kirk's data = page views.

I agree that the 22 million number looks suspicious. If you do the multiplication, it implies either a wholly implausible number of hours spent on site by members, or a vast number of non-member page views, or both.

[Len Middleton]

Kirk,

Thinking about it further, average viewing time could be considered a leading indicator (rather than lagging indicator). If more time on average is spent viewing the pages, then yes the pages are more relevant to the viewers. And interested viewers can be expected to refer the site to friends with similar interests, thereby forecasting an increase in participation.

Also each interested viewer need to spend a lot of time to offset the uninterested viewers (assuming 15 seconds or less is correct), or web crawlers (if they do impact).

Hope that is helpful,

Len

[Stephen Willard]

In the past three years I have observed the following while I was in the field photographing:

• I am encountering a lot more younger LF users.
  
• Overall, I am encountering a lot more LF users in general.
  
• More people who are not photographers now know what LF photography is then ever before.

In recent years, I have felt the digital revolution has brought growth to LF photography. More people then ever are becoming interested in photography because digital photography makes photography easier, simpler, and less technical. As some of these digital photographers mature in their discipline, they become more discriminating in their craft and move to LF photography as a means of finding a better solution to their vision. Because the population of digital photographers has been growing so is the number of people that migrate to LF photography. Hence, the growth that I have seen in the field, Kirk has observed on this site, and the increase in recent LF film sales (despite the poor economy) is consistent with my conclusions.