Roger Clarke’s Web-Site Statistics

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd,  1995-2024
Photo of Roger Clarke

I launched this site in mid-February 1995, when the Web was still pretty young.

Check Google Page Rank

The cumulative hit-count passed 70 million during 2023.

Hits are currently running at around 2.5-3.0 million p.a.

(Real measure: a page is landed on by a real person about every 30 seconds).

On the basis of an analysis a few years ago, the split of hits across the c. 2500 pages in the various segments within the site was then roughly as follows:


Details

The cumulative hit-count of over 70 million Feb 1995 to 31 Dec 2023 comprised:

During 2008, a rough indicator of daily activity was 9-13,000 hits, resulting from 500-2,000 visits, by people in 60-80 different countries, hitting about 800-1,000 separate pages.

Last time I looked (quite some time ago), it appeared that between 10,000 and 20,000 pages linked to pages on this site. That's not too bad for one person's narrowly specialised and little-advertised publications. (But I switched hosting from the ANU to the rogerclarke.com domain in February 2009, so some old links could still be depending on the redirects I put into place).

A perusal of AWStats suggests that direct hits (i.e. from emails) may remain the largest source, but with very large numbers of referrals from search-engines, primarily Google, and hits from embedded links in other sites:


The Fiasco of 20 January 2009

This is a story of bouquets and brickbats. Commencing in August 1994, the ANU's IT Services Group hosted this site, and hosted it generally very well. (I was a full-time academic at the ANU 1984-95, and have been a Visiting Fellow, later Visiting Professor, since then).

In late January 2009, I was out of Internet range (walking in the mountains of Tasmania). As a result of an ANU blunder, the site went off-air on 20 Jan 2009. (ANU IT Services had given webmasters of other sites on that server several months' notice that the server was being de-commissioned, but failed to tell the server's biggest user, me). I was unaware of the failure for almost a week, until I was in the lounge at Hobart airport on the way home. As a result of being off-air for a week, the site disappeared entirely out of Google's search-index, and the Google PageRank of 6 was lost.

The ANU accepted that they had to restore the service for a sufficient period to enable conversion and transfer to a new server, and it was available again from 27 Jan 2009; but they gave me short notice to shift the site to a differently-configured service. I had long complained about the ANU's appalling policy that, when a Visiting Professor's appointment expires, support for their web-site is withdrawn, and withdrawn immediately. I therefore chose to move the site to a location where I could be confident about both the level of service and the site's longevity.

I had previously acquired the domains rogerclarke.com and rogerclarke.com.au, but had not made any other plans for a move that I'd assumed was still some years away. During the period 27 Jan to 9 Feb, I had to seek out a suitable ISP, plan and execute the conversion of over a thousand files in varying formats and developed using several generations of templates, run up the new site, install redirects at the ANU site, and re-launch it.

As a result of the ANU blunder:

It gradually recovered, and several weeks after re-launch, the Google PageRank was back to its previous score of 6.

By the end of 2009, the site was again averaging close to 9,000 hits per day.

To be fair, full recovery was never likely. The ANU was one of the earliest movers in the Web world (as documented in Clarke 2013), continues to offer a great deal of material, and has a Page Rank of 8. So part of the reason that my pages sorted so high in search-engine output was that my site had been benefiting from being a sub-site of the ANU's.

During 2009-13, I worked my way around various small ACT providers (Apex, Grapevine, Infinite), but all dropped short of the kind of professionalism I needed (for my measly c. $500 p.a.). I shifted to SublimeIP (sponsors of APF for over a decade) in March 2013. I moved to the more cost-effective and technically well-supported VentraIP service in August-September 2018.



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The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax.

From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. It passed 65 million in early 2021.

Sponsored by the Gallery, Bunhybee Grasslands, the extended Clarke Family, Knights of the Spatchcock and their drummer
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Created: 15 February 1995 - Last Amended: 24 December 2023 by Roger Clarke - Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
This document is at www.rogerclarke.com/Stats.html
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