JeffId observed that Patrick Courrielche’s series describes TAV as a small or even tiny blog. In contrast, no size adjective is attached to The Blackboard, or other blogs. Given that, I bet a bunch of you might be curious about the relative level of traffic at climate blogs.
Well. Let me tell you. This is a topic that must be discussed in context of the blizzard of traffic that fell on us all just after the big story hit. As many of you now know, I am given credit as the blog that first reported the appearance of the link to the zip files in comments at Jeff Id’s blog. This fact was not highlighted by the mainstream media in the immediate flurry after Nov. 19 (and rightly so.)
The lack-of-mention was lucky for me because even without incoming links from Newspaper like The Wall Street Journal,– my blog flickered on and off from the increased load. Despite periodic 15 minute outages, my visit count soared. Below, you can see the traffic as logged by Google Analytics:
(Many of regulars will notice visits were reduced during the holiday period when I was not posting.)
What of other blogs?
I can’t access other bloggers google analytics counts. However, I can show their Alexa reach tallies– which are proportional to the number of distinct visitors.
Curious to learn how Climategate affected JeffId’s of The AirVent’s traffic, I created a graph comparing his Alexa reach history to mine:
As you can see, The Air Vent was once a small blog. It’s currently widely read blog.
But readers might think, “Lucia’s only comparing to The Blackboard. That’s not a big blog like… oh… say Real Climate.” Here’s a comparison of the traffic reach history for The Air Vent and Real Climate:
Are you curious to see how Real Climate compares to Climate Audit? Where here it is:
My impression is Real Climate hosted on a robust machine did not slow one iota under the load. Meanwhile, Climate Audit which was running off a server paid for out of SteveMc’s pocket groan to a halt many times. ( I think SteveMc now runs his blog out of WordPress.org. )
But we all know which blog is really, really big. Here’s Watts’ Up with that compared to Real Climate:
So, Jeff, if you are reading: I think your blog used to be tiny. It’s currently widely read. Who knows what the future will hold?
Note: I’m experiencing service interruptions today. I’ll check Google Analytics Friday to see if the traffic is heavy. It’s rare for a link from Climate Audit to do this… but maybe there is something else going on.
Your traffic might have increased by 1 on more days than it has if I could get your RSS feed to work. Jeff Id has gained a few extra hits for the same reason – I usually reach your blog via his blogroll.
I can’t be the only person having this problem and probably should have mentioned it before. I’m using the Sage 1.4.3 add-on in Firefox 3.5.7. ‘Error: XML Parse Error’. It’s been like this for … 3 or 4 months?
Yeah, I’ve had the same problem with the RSS feed.
Chad, Vinny–
Sorry about the RSS feed. Do either or you have tips for how to fix it? WordPress has modules to create that, but I have no idea what the correct XML formatting for RSS is nor do I k now which subroutine in WP creates that file. I’m afraid I don’t want to spend some unforseeable number of hours trying to learn the proper formatting for RSS etc.
Lucia- the sort of problems you experienced with WordPress on a single box server is why I eventually had to move CA to wordpress.com and its cloud computing setup.
WP on dedicated server just can’t handle traffic spike like you get for some reason. Perhaps neither of us found the magic tweak that makes it happen.
While wordpress.com doesn’t have all the plugins, I also don’t have to babysit its code temper tantrums. That was a big factor for Steve McIntyre.
Lucia,
I could potentially help you with RSS. It’s supposed to be completely easy to setup. Of course, I can’t guarantee that the RSS feed software read the marketing blurb on that 🙂
MrPete–
I figured out the RSS issue. My plugin to show results for the gambling was screwing it up! (I don’t know why it screwed it up, but I just put an “if(!is_feed()) in the part that called the betting script and now that’s fixed.
But.. sent you a note on now to put the wrappers in to help the people using CA assistant with their problems.
Anthony–
I have an inexpensive account. The reason the traffic spikes take it down is Dreamhost notices spikes and auto-limits to protect other users. I don’t blame them. I’m not moving yet because I like the flexibility of using Dreamhost. But… Imay move some day.
And all this time I thought you folks preferred UAH to RSS.
*rimshot*
:-p
Wahaay! It works!
Thanks.
I’m just glad that Climate Audit now can’t be pulled down by a Slashdotting or an Instalanche.
Running a weblog on your own hardware is usually no problem unless you’re making worldwide headlines, in which case its a bloody nightmare. Keeping CA up against massive traffic on a single box lost me a lot of sleep.
Might I suggest Lucia, that you transfer to wordpress.com before your server melts down the next time?
JohnA–
It’s Dreamhosts server; I just rent space. I back up the blog database every day using a plugin that zips it up and emails it to me.
Lucia
Then your weblog has a finite size beyond which email won’t work (5-10MB depending on the mail server).
CA started on a dreamhosts-type infrastructure but then we started getting complaints about traffic,bandwidth and processor utilization. Very quickly (with the number of comments coming in) backing up by email quickly became impossible.
Good luck!
This reminds me of Jonova’s post on the spike in traffic costing her about $700 extra.
Staying with a service that shuts down when a certain breakpoint is reached probably saves wear and tear on your wallet.
I can’t imagine how Watts Up With That can afford it.
Maybe WordPress give a bulk rate or something.
I am a newbie, but I am staying. Sure have learned so much.
Thanks so much.
I love the plot of RC vs CA. Just check out the apparent correlation.
Makes one wonder what the causality is……??
Come on, this is supposed to be a Climate Blog. Where is the spaghetti graph with all the sites all at once and some other bit tagged onto the end? And no error bars!
:@) bob
Anyone done a story on the air-compressor effect in southern Greenland with their strong east wind pattern these last several days?
Looks like a Santa Ana forest fire scenario.
No “hide the decline” happening here!
It will be interesting to see how much post climategate traffic is retained by each blog. Was that a “Yamal” peak for CA in late September?
I can’t help thinking that climategate has changed forever the way climate change is debated.
btw is troll baiting a new form of online marketing?
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