Geeky stats on blog traffic

I often get asked, usually by colleagues, where I find the time to blog and why would I want to blog.

Well, here's an answer: On average, just under 100,000 different people are dropping by here every month. And I don't know many journalists who'd pass up a chance to tell 100,000 people something they don't know.

So, first: Thanks all for dropping by.

I just ran some of the big numbers on 2008 and found that:

• This blog served up more than 2.1 million page views in 2008.
• This blog average 99,213 unique visitors each month. What does that mean? Well, if you drop by here once or a 100 times in a month, you only count once as a “unique visitor”. So unique visitor is the closest thing to what newspapers talk about when they talk about their circulation figure.
• The best month for traffic here was last month, with more than 127,000 unique visitors. The slowest month was July with about 70,000 unique visitors.

And here are the 20 most popular posts on this blog for the month of December, 2008 (If you want to review any of these, just select and copy the title, paste it into the search box on the left, and away you go):

1. This ain't the Canadian way (Wed 03 Dec 2008 06:06 PM EST)
2. Liberals want answers (Mon 15 Dec 2008 10:41 AM EST)
3. The Senate Man (Fri 12 Dec 2008 10:18 AM EST)
4. The errant e-mail (Mon 01 Dec 2008 02:36 PM EST)
5. 24 Sussex Drive — Great for street hockey (Mon 19 Jun 2006 10:46 AM EDT)
6. F-35 – Test Flight (Wed 10 Jan 2007 03:07 PM EST)
7. More senators — lots more senators (Wed 10 Dec 2008 10:54 PM EST)
8. Can Iggy transform the Liberals? Can he transform Canadian politics? (Tue 09 Dec 2008 11:02 PM EST)
9. And that's that: Parliament prorogues (Thu 04 Dec 2008 02:47 PM EST)
10. Ramping up (Sat 26 Nov 2005 11:08 PM EST)
11. Will PM Dion bunk in at Motel 8 and shun 24 Sussex, like he said he would? (Tue 02 Dec 2008 10:29 AM EST)
12. Ignatieff on liberalism and the Canadian Liberal Party (Tue 09 Dec 2008 04:14 PM EST)
13. Michael Ignatieff on liberalism and the Canadian Liberal Party (Fri 04 Mar 2005 09:34 AM EST)
14. Dion resigns (Mon 08 Dec 2008 01:43 PM EST)
15. Harper promises “unprecedented fiscal actions” to calm “state of fear” (Fri 21 Nov 2008 10:00 PM EST)
16. Look out! It's the Duceppetives! (Wed 03 Dec 2008 11:37 AM EST)
17. Poilievre announces budget date (Sat 29 Nov 2008 03:29 PM EST)
18. Mercedes' SmartCar (Thu 20 Jan 2005 01:03 PM EST)
19. A very special 40th anniversary: Your Computer Mouse (Sun 07 Dec 2008 10:05 PM EST)
20. The anti-abortion MPs (Fri 12 May 2006 07:00 AM EDT)

Again – thanks!