The diverse sources of blog traffic

Barnsley Bill raised a question about blog traffic in a post this morning. He wondered why The Standard would be getting 11% of it’s traffic from India.

So Adam took a look at where a variety of blogs appear to get their traffic using Alexa as the source.

Kiwiblog: NZ  79.3%, Netherlands 7.4%, India 3.1%, USA 2.3%, Australia 1.3%, UK 1.3%, Others 5.4%

Barnsley Bill:-NZ 95.2%, Others 4.8%

The Standard: NZ 80.4%, India 9.0%, US 6.7%, Others 4.0%

No Minister: NZ 96.5% Others 3.5%

The Inquiring Mind: NZ  67.8% US 18.9% Others 13.1%

WhaleOil:- NZ 88.2%, Netherlands 6.7%, Others 5.0%

The percentage of Standard readership outside of NZ is similar to that of Kiwiblog. Given The Standard’s heavy focus on NZ issues that is perhaps a little suprising, but there is no real reason to think that there is anything manipulative in the %. Over time Adam has noted marked swings in his offshore readership. At one time there was a steady % in Malaysia and the Philippines.

One might as well wonder why DPF and WhaleOil have such high % of readership in The Netherlands, at the time these stats were pulled.

Adam’s blog has tended to always have a fairly high % of offshore readers, though the NZ % increased during the 2008 election campaign. Indeed, Adam writes many of his posts with a potential non NZ audience in mind. A long term target is to have perhaps a 50/50 split.

All the % reveal is that these blogs have diverse readerships. The % vary widely over time. The other factor that comes to mind is that many of us are by nature competitive and at times become somewhat obsessive.

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