Or is it Digged? Not sure what the kids are calling it.
This blog’s been running for some time at about 1,500 visitors a day – occasionally rising to 2,000 or just above. That’s not bad although clearly not in the same league as Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy or even Respectful Insolence. Anyway, last Sunday The Bad Astronomer linked to my How do you prove photography to a blind man? post from two years ago. That link gave me a boost to just over 3,000 visitors last Sunday – quite a lot for a weekend.
Someone obviously liked the post and it was submitted to StumbleUpon, Reddit and especially Digg. The SiteMeter tells the story:
A lot more people than normal (approximately 110,000 more) were exposed to the skeptical view of psychics and parapsychology. And perhaps some will stay around, read the “Classic Skeptico Posts” linked in the right hand column. I hope they enjoy it. And thanks for the plug, Phil.
One problem though – as you can see, March is now a very impressive month for visitor numbers compared with previous months. April’s going to have its work cut out to keep up!
Count me as one of those that arrived due to Bad Astronomy. You're now in my RSS reader. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: t3knomanser | March 31, 2007 at 07:01 PM
By the way, it's Dugg.
Posted by: Serra | March 31, 2007 at 07:21 PM
I need some of that. I'm hovering at just over 200 hits a day.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | March 31, 2007 at 07:45 PM
That photography thing was pretty damn awesome by the way.
Posted by: Rasputin | March 31, 2007 at 07:54 PM
Wonderful! Glad to do it. I was on travel this weekend, and in fact several of the people who invited me to the talk were discussing your writing, and they really liked it!
Posted by: Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer | March 31, 2007 at 08:38 PM
The photography post was great, and after browsing around a bit here, I expect to be a regular. I especially enjoyed your "What the Bleep..." posts.
Also, I think it's "Dugg" but I could be wrong.
Posted by: JPF | March 31, 2007 at 09:09 PM
Congrats! I love being dugg, though it hasn't happened in a while. They tend to like my worse stuff (for some reason), but yours was quite a read. I was confused as to how that post was popping up everywhere, but not Google Reader. It was a nice one too, quite deserving.
Posted by: Stuart Coleman | March 31, 2007 at 09:51 PM
Congrats. This post on DCA by me was Digged a couple of months ago and brought in about 30,000 visitors in a day. Sadly, the spike is usually pretty transient and temporary. My traffic was back to normal by around day three or four. Still, some of the new readers may have stuck around, given that my traffic the month after was up over the traffic the month before the spike.
As for your not having as much traffic as I do, you're doing pretty darned good for not posting nearly as often as I do. I average around 2,500 to 3,000 visits a day during the week, about 60% of that on the weekends. That's less than twice your traffic.
Posted by: Orac | March 31, 2007 at 10:11 PM
Something similar happened to me during the dust-up between Spocko and the evil minions of KSFO. Mike Stark at Daily Kos linked to one of my posts at the height of the controversy and I started getting more visitors in an hour than I usually got in a week. Now that the big spike in traffic has passed, my stats look pretty anemic again, even though they are still mostly higher than before. Fun while it lasted.
Posted by: Zeno | March 31, 2007 at 10:57 PM
Very nice boost there. This is an outstanding blog, and you certainly deserve a wide audience. Here's hoping that April puts March to shame.
Posted by: vjack | April 01, 2007 at 05:57 AM
Wow!! Thats almost off the chart!!!
Posted by: Matt Vapor | April 01, 2007 at 05:58 AM
Impressive.
I still average around 50 (plus whatever blogline readers I have), and a not insignificant portion of my readers comes from people clicking on the link to my blog at Skeptico.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | April 01, 2007 at 02:54 PM
I came here from Digg reading your photography post.. I think I've read most of your blog the past week or two and visit it daily. Keep up the good work / quality, it's appreciated.
Posted by: Cody | April 01, 2007 at 10:33 PM
Indeed -- as a reader of both this site and Respectful Insolence, I'd say that posting frequency is the only reason I visit the latter more regularly. Content-wise, I find both equally enjoyable.
Posted by: Davis | April 01, 2007 at 11:44 PM
To all the new readers
Thanks for your kind comments and I’m glad you like the blog. I only hope I can keep up the standard you’ve come to expect. Well, the volume probably won’t be as high as in the first year, but I’ll try to keep the quality high.
To Kristjan and Bronze Dog
Until this recent flurry around the blind man post, my most read posts were “What The Bleep” and “The Secret” – most people finding them through Google. The conclusion is that if you want traffic, write critical posts about popular New Age garbage. Of course, you’ll then “attract” (ha!) some of the most destructive and vitriolic commenters from around the world, but I guess nothing’s for free.
Posted by: Skeptico | April 02, 2007 at 11:46 AM
Sounds like a plausible way to do it Skeptico. My two most read posts is the one where I link Hovind with the tax protester movement, and the one where I tell the difference between percentage and percentage points. Fairly boring stuff.
I need to go look for controvercy....
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | April 03, 2007 at 08:58 AM