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10M Unique Visits
Posted by Prof. Goose on April 7, 2008 - 6:05pm
Just in the last hour, TOD went over 10 million unique visits in just over three years. Thanks very much to the TOD community!
[Clarifying note by Super G] What's being measured is the number of unique visitors in a day. When a person views the site five times in one day, it counts as one visit; when a person views the site on five separate days, it counts as five visits.
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Cool!
Congrats Professor,
Can't believe it's just 3 years since TOD launched.
Crap,
Feels like a lifetime. Sure wish I had invested in THAI two years ago when it first came up.
A Canadian oil guy I talked to at the Casey Research symposium said that the THAI guys have been using their appreciated stock price to buy conventional producing properties.
Very well done!
Next target of 25M page views should be reached within the next fortnight. It's now at 24.5M page views.
My gramma claims she was the 10 millionth. Said she wanted a TOD sweatshirt. I told her there was no such thing. She replied that she'd settle for a hershey's bar.
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the current level of peak oil awareness? And what about the level now compared to 3 years ago. Doesn't make me feel too optimistic yet, regarding preparation and mitigation.
Now ~ 1 in 1000 people ?
The term "peak oil" is now a weekly occurrence in British newspapers. We are a long way forward from where we were 3 years ago... but still no where near where we need to be. :(
Well if you go to blogpulse you can run the graph and get:
Prof first made this plot back in April '05 bt I can't find the one where we ran this comparison before, though we have.
This one perhaps more telling.
Also, you might try playing around with Google Trends.
It goes back all the way back to 2004 and shows relative search volume of whatever terms you enter. The search I linked to compares "peak oil" to "global warming" and "mars." Right now, Mars has both of those beat, and I don't really think Mars has very high search volume. You can also search in it for specific cities, nations, or regions to see where the most searches are coming from.
It's kind of telling, but once you try comparing PO to things like American Idol it gets pretty depressing.
EDIT: Another fun thing to put in, try "gas prices" in the search box, as compared to something else or by itself, and notice the very clear seasonal variation right at the begining of Q2 each year (plus a spike at Katrina). Like clockwork.
Well, an awful lot of Martians use Google, you know.
And they've already had Global Warming and Peak Oil there, so they are not as interested in those topics.
Britney was channeling Ronald Reagan the other night and told me so.
My tinfoil hat had a bad crease, so I could not get the rest of the message.
It kept getting garbled with Arnold Schwarzeneggar channeling Elvis Presley and claiming to be the King. He also kept saying "Ah'll be back! Right after the Apocalypse and the following messages..."
I tuned out at that point. Someone kept repeating "Relax! You're soaking in it!" over and over again.
Wow! You too! Thought it was just me. We must be using the same brand of tin foil.
I've been coming to this site almost everyday for 1 year and 30 weeks. Known about PO since Fall 2003. Got my intro thru "Hubbert's Peak," from Kenneth Deffeyes.
I remember googling back in late 2003 or early 2004. Back then there were far fewer sites on PO then now.
Of course, I know people are much more likely to know everything there is to know about American Idol (I've seen it only once at my brother's house)....
But you've got to have your priorities. Brittany Spears ranks higher for now. That's how shallow we've become.
Maybe we'll deserve what get.
I was getting sloshed at my local Tiki bar when I mentioned to a couple of strangers - and they knew. My guess its getting around the intelligentsia.
is there a rough estimate of how many regular (more than once a week) / or total unique visitors that come here?
Google analytics says that it's about 166k unique visitors in the past month and 2.4M over the three years. No way to know how accurate that is with DHCP, etc.
I have been looking at this web-site for just 6 months and it is now my home-page. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
I'm glad that my daily updates from TOD are part of the collective. One per day, less a few for various reasons, for the last year, cool, I'm up over the 350 mark for individual visits. I hope TOD ANZ can reach this milestone in the near future but that seems unlikely. I would reckon American Idol would generate more chat than PO even here in Australia. Congratulations guys, keep up the excellent work.
Just found TOD a couple of weeks ago. Link from clusterfuck nation, check it out.
Great site, informative and thought provoking. I've been reading about po but only in the backround for some time. To bad talk of a peak is still considered fringe or crazy. The subject is far to important to our survival for greed to shout this subject down.
Glad I found you and keep up the good work.
Congrats!
Here's some additional data for PO vs GW vs CH from Google search trends.
Sadly, not enough data for the oil drum to register searches.
Now we still need something as effective for the non-English speaking world. That means many languages...
Well, with all those visits the ad revenue must be going gangbusters. Not that there's any harm profiting from discussion of mankind's imminent misery....
Yeah, the word is that SuperGoose is now working from the back of a brand spanking new stretch Hummer with a couple of floozies pouring the champagne. Apparently, Professor Goose and Leanan got into a fight over the use of TOD's new Lear Jet. You haven't heard from Stuart Staniford for a while because he's just popped $20 million down for a space flight with the ruskies. And I heard from good sources that Nate Hagens has just bought 10 per cent of Burger King to ensure a market for his CAFO beef.
Stay on it, Mamba. Somebody has to bring these profiteers in misery to heel.
I'm sure your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but the readers should know that our parent organization is a 501(c)3 non-profit and all advertising revenues go toward the costs of running the site and publicity efforts.
Dear Gail The Actuary, WestTexas, Prof. Goose, Stoneleigh & All You Other Invaluable Contributors:
I want to say how thankful I am to TOD and what a great debt I owe to all of you.
I am a Singapore-based Canadian industry writer and analyst living and working in Singapore. I first discovered things were amok in the energy sector back when I worked for Petroleum Argus about 8 years ago. Later, I began to see disturbing signs in the metal, food,wood, and other commodity markets, especially with respect to their relationship to oil and gas but could not put it together.
A year ago, I stumbled into TOD at the same time I took over an Asian feed grains magazine. Your invaluable insights and forward looking analysis finally let me put it all together. You have changed my perspective, the type of analysis I do in my daily work and determined the way I am planning out the last 40 years of my life.
There is no greater gift than to understand the world around you; no greater blessing than to see the future. I am more on the food and commodities side but if any of you ever want to get in touch, I am at iamthecactus@hotmail.com --you've done much for me and May God Bless ALL OF YOU.
May God Also Bless the Human Race So That It Learns To Act On TOD's Findings.
With Gratitude,
Tropical Cactus
Toa Payoh, Singapore
Congrats to the owners, another milestone, and thanks for their work.
Geneva, Switz. One day last week I travelled all about on public transport, walked in the streets, and popped into strange cafés, etc. And did my own micro trottoir (micro pavement, Tv questions passers-by) on peak oil. My sample of 57 was hardly random, as one does not meet high level professionals on the bus at 14.00 hours. Grannies, low level workers, an Indian tourist, teens, many over 55, etc. Included were, in a bank: receptionist, usher, banker, secretary, security guard, and another customer, obviously very rich and irate. (One of my errands was a big Swiss bank. That’s another tale.)
Used mostly was French, and the expression, trans. from Eng, “le pic pétrolier” is not well known, it is not an oral expression, not usable in this context. Expressions like: the lack of oil, the growing scarcity of petrol, etc. were used.
38 people understood exactly or roughly what I was talking about, many had interesting opinions, knowledge. Most had an uncaring attitude - amused or doomerish, trusting in the authorities or not, que sera sera (see context, of course, its is light chat..) A few welcomed it - pollution, noisy cars - decibels in town is a BIG deal - global warming, etc. *
To my surprise, some of the others thought it was BS, a Gvmt. plot, contra the auto/travel industry, in favor of the Gvmt, e.g.
Well they are installing all these trams they get a lot of money for it the contracts you know they tax us to the max and want to control us all. I can’t drive around anymore, that’s why I’m on the tram.. (!)
* a campaign that hasn’t really taken off much but can be seen here or there at strategic points is to hang out a piece of white sheet from window/balcony, with the legend “this is a lung” or other similar on it - in the space of 3 weeks the material becomes tattered, frayed, dingy grey, black around the edges, ugly beyond belief, disfiguring the look of the building. An unexpected melding of anti-smoking prop (started by Hitler), greens (re. pollution not consumption), and class in the Marxist sense - those who own no cars and want them all gone protest.
congrats TOD , 10 million unique visits is a very nice number !
Congratulations. I would say that peak oil awareness is very much on the up in the UK - although the problem of mixed or 'conditional' messages means that while many folk have heard the expression they have not formed a clear opinion regarding the potential severity or abruptness of the situation.
The Geological society is hosting an evening debate on the subject next week - 15/April/2008 - with Speakers including Colin Campbell, and representatives from BP, BG and Shell. Venue is the old world of Burlington House, where bearded geologists of old pontificated on the the vexing questions of their day, and Lincoln was grappling with the issue of North vs South...
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/page3202_en.html
Good job!
Two thoughts come to mind on this milestone:
1)It is rather ironic that one of the deeper questions we are asking is about the sustainability and availability of energy under the current societal growth model, yet here we are, wishing on higher growth for our own site. I suppose I share this wish, but in the end I care about quality not quantity. For example, if all the American Idol readers got linked over here, thus propelling our stats, it would be completely meaningless. We need people to read here that are smart, civically minded, fall more towards the cooperative side of the normal distribution of altruism/selfishness and have the ability/ambition to make changes in their organization, companies, localities, or just their own lives.
2)We have a problem which I have increasingly noticed. The readers that have been with us from the start are suffering from the no new novel info begets boredom treadmill, because they understand most of the issues and are reasonably ingrained into their general attitude towards peak oil. We (the contributors) are part of this group, and therefore we usually write about relatively advanced topics - kind of like adding new colors or shapes of thread to an already existing huge tapestry. New readers, and perhaps many that fall in the 'desired' group above, could not have kept up with the warp and the weft that is the loom of peak oil, and therefore may be turned off or confused when they read an advanced post (e.g. the latest by Professor Charles Hall). Many of us have also been over and over some of the basic tenets so many times that now some egregious assumptions go unchallenged - there is no mental reward from doing so for the 46th time... So its a very real challenge to keep things interesting and relevant for our regular readers and not alienate new, potentially influential readers freshly exposed to the topic of peak oil. I don't have the answers to this, except for these new readers to take leave of absences from their jobs and spend 3 months reading our archives...;-)
Hi Nate,
I have been reading TOD almost every day since the outset and cannot say I've been bored (though I acknowledge that others have different boredom thresholds!). But I get your point about balance between old and new readers. My suggestion would be to have the current home page be shifted to '/posts' and the home page open to a general overview to bring new readers up to speed. I guess I'm just asking TOD editors to summarise the last 3 years posts!!!
Re general awareness of peak oil, here in the UK this has increased, many have heard through the msm, but I'd say that those with a more complete understanding of the issues were reached via conference speakers or the TT movement. Relatively few via the web. So I wouldn't use web searches as a representative measure of awareness in the population.
Finally, I just like to extend my thanks to TOD editors, contributors and seasoned posters, well done guys n gals. Shame that the sort of people here don't become Presidents/Prime Ministers!