Some Useless facts and Numbers About this Blog

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I just came across this while looking for something else. At first I was not sure whether the numbers are good or bad, but when I started comparing results elsewhere, it seems its not that bad.
Statistics Summary for paul-barford.blogspot.com

Paul-barford.blogspot.com is ranked #2,340,509 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Visitors to the site view 1.3 unique pages each day on average. Approximately 79% of visits to the site are bounces (one pageview only), and search engines refer roughly 21% of visits to the site. The time spent in a typical visit to Paul-barford.blogspot.com is about 70 seconds, with 38 seconds spent on each pageview.

I can't quite see how anyone can get through a page of my stuff in 38 seconds, must be good at skimming. This does not suggest that the message is getting through too effectively to the general public, I imagine those who persevere beyond 70 seconds are those who have an interest in the topic anyway.

In comparison, I can't say this surprises me (but I wish the website contained more than it does, this seems likely to be largely traffic to the database) Portable Antiquities Scheme 'http://finds.org.uk/' Rank: 935,475. What did surprise me greatly was the granddaddy of the archaeological heritage blogs, started July 17, 2007, with a post called Does looting matter? which according to this firm's estimation comes out 3,404,592th.

But then compared with the opposition, that's not by any means a bad result. look at this:
Site Information for ACCG ('accg.us') Alexa Traffic Rank: 9,684,267
Peter Tompa's 'Culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com' fares even worse, Rank: 25,560,129
Dave Welsh 'classicalcoins.blogspot.com': Rank: 26,525,235 and for Sayles' 'ancientcoincollecting.blogspot', a rather better - Rank: 6,837,041
Antiquities Dealers Association UK: 'http://www.theada.co.uk/' Rank: 7,077,510
BUT: Association of International Antiquities Dealers (AIAD) 'http://aiad.org.uk/' Rank:160,303 (Hmmmm, must pay them a lot more attention).

and "Candice Jarman's" Anti-blog? Site Information for 'paulbarford-heritage-the-ruth': Alexa Traffic Rank: No Data. It does not even figure on their radar.

The Portable Antiquities Collecting and Heritage Issues blog was begun on 7th January 2008 and currently has 2261 posts on it on a variety of topics. Initially it was started so I'd not clog British and other archaeological forums with posts about metal detecting which nobody wanted to read, especially when the detectorists began being obnoxious in "reply" and I'd not attract the US coineys to the SAFE blog which had more or less the same effect. The direct stimulus, I can reveal now, was that Peter Tompa started his blog [September 16, 2008] and I felt something was needed to counter the misinformation the coineys were spreading (and continue to spread). I thought I'd retire to my own little corner of the internet and rant on and those who want to can drop in, those who don't stay away. Well, it seems there is a niche need for something like this, Peter Tompa has just gained 90 000 hits (which is not to be sneezed at of course) and in a few days this blog's counter will be registering 390 000 hits, even if they are 38-second ones.

I suppose the next challenge is to write posts which can be read from beginning to end in 38 seconds and contain all the main points.

Vignette: Alexa logo from their website