I was just updating some of the stats that I use in my presentation in prep for this week’s event, when I noticed something that I thought RCG readers (and contributors) might appreciate.
The total number of visitors to RCG has always been impressive, but I found it wild that out of all the people who visited RCG in February 2008, over 2,800 of those people have visited the site more than 200 times! And almost 4,000 of February’s visitors have been to the site more than 100 times. Those numbers are an obvious tribute to the contributors and commenters who keep RCG interesting and relevant day-in and day-out!
OMG! Is that all only for the month of February?!?!
Yep! Just for February.
Those are HUGE numbers Dustin!
ARDELL, does that give you stage fright? LOL! 🙂
You know it did when I first saw it, Deborah. Seriously. I had NO idea! I do have access to the stats, but I don’t look at them unless Dustin posts them.
LOL….As a public speaker, I think you’re supposed to “just imagine everyone in their underwear” 😉
It works better if I picture everyone as David G. No one gets nervous talking to him.
What was the traffic for January? How does it compare? – Those are some impressive stats, you must have some really loyal readers.
Would be interesting to see a content drilldown (I’m assuming that came from GA) and find out which bloggers and which threads those repeats come from – could teach us fans a lot about user retention and loyalty.
RCG Fan:
February was our best month ever in terms of that one particular stat. Nonetheless, here are some more data points for people who have visited RCG more than 200 times:
Feb ’08: 2,826
Jan ’08: 2,495
July ’07: 2,026
Jan ’07: 1,384
July ’06: 939
(I wasn’t using GA in Jan ’06)
In terms of more data, I’d be happy to share more with you, but I’m not exactly sure what you’d find useful. Because RCG’s directory structure is date based, the content drilldown doesn’t get at the highest rated content very easily. The reason being that even if one post from “2006” did really well, the combined posts from “2008” are inevitably going to be attracting more traffic. It’s possible to drill deeper than the year, but I’m not sure how that would help with understanding reader retention and loyalty.
However, you might also find it interesting that the Seattle Bubble was the #1 referrer to the site in February having sent us 1,444 visits. While this is impressive, it’s barely 5% of the organic traffic that Google sent us (26,813 visits).
And it is more than a coincidence that the total search engine traffic, 31,468 is relatively close to the total # of visitors that came only once to the site (33,398) from the chart above since those are the users who are would seem most likely to visit once and never come back.
Very cool data, Dustin, thanks for sharing it. I’ve been watching as traffic to my own blog has been increasing over time and it’s fun to see what RCG does in comparison. It’s been a talked about item that there are many regular readers but it’s nice to see that quantified. I’ve been honored to be part of it.
Dustin,
I would venture to say that all or most real estate blogs pick up this time of year as more and more people think about buying and selling property. Wouldn’t that be the case for all of RCG’s experience? February being higher than November and December?
Most definitely!
To give you an idea…
Between Dec ’07 and Feb ’08, our visits were up 53% and our pageviews were up 59%.
The difference was even greater last year:
Between Dec ’06 and Feb ’07, our visits were up 81% and our pageviews were up 78%.
Sounds like the bigger you are the harder it is to grow at the same high rate. Sounds like a “Tipping Point” argument. Hard to keep getting more and more “Tippoint Points” that spur the same level of growth year after year.
Back at #5, Deborah says, LOL….As a public speaker, I think you’re supposed to “just imagine everyone in their underwear
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