Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Iain Dale's Diary: Statistical Twittery With Tony Benn


I've got a hunch going on that says that Mr Dale may be sadly deluded about his readership. One way or another. He says he has 80,000 absolute unique visitors (AUVs) in his latest monthly total. And 600,000 AUVs in the last year.

Here are a couple of for instance explanations for these figures, with the latter 7.5 times the former.

Scenario One: Perhaps he has about 25,000 "regulars" who visit in several months, possibly every month. And then he has towards 50,000 who make one or more visits in a particular month, but never come back.

25,000 + (50,000 * 12) = 625,000

Scenario Two: The Annual AUV figure is no such thing and is instead the sum of M1 ... M12 averaging 50,000 a month. Say 30,000 at the start growing steadily to 80,000.

Let's have this right. These are still very good figures indeed. For UK political blogs. And probably ten times my own or better. For example 10,000 unique visits and 5,000 unique visitors in a good month. Currently running at a bit less than that.

But is it 600,000 unique visitors 95% of whom do not feature in more than one month?

Or is it say 40,000 or so regulars month in and month out topped up with hundreds or thousands of less loyal visitors?

And which of these would you wish for if you were Iain?

Meanwhile. I think there is a tendancy to get these statporn outbreaks wrong and despite coaching from Wardman and others it's a fairly shallow learning curve just now. If I'm right - that it's probably the latter, more loyal model - then Iain's accidentally told Tony Benn a porky pie.

Mr Dale is yet to explain how Mr Benn took him into the wardrobe and explained through their little adventure how Dale's carte blanche for the State of Israel splattering "precision" bombs with a 50% chance of landing within 20 feet of where they were aimed was not in fact very clever at all.

7 comments:

septicisle said...

According to Analytics I had 123,467 AUVs last year, and considering I punch nowhere near the weight of Dale, I don't think he's got too much to boast about.

Anonymous said...

Hold up, Chris! I thought it was only me and you and that EHCP chap (chapess?) who read your stuff?

I thought we'd agreed that we would just make up names and comments just to get the numbers up and provoke Dale every so often?

Is that still the plan?

BTW perhaps you need to keep the length of your posts down a bit as even I'm getting bored after the third paragraph.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks Septicisle: But which way are the AUVs of Dale and indeed of your good self worked out? Correctly i.e. Mr Dale probably has around 25,000 regulars year round and lots of passing trade that doesn't stick? Or incorrectly, so it the monthly AUVs added up - which is by coincidence or otherwise about the right figure?

And if there is this error between monthly and annual AUVs is there also one between weekly and monthly?

Either way the figures are high in the context but very very low in terms of political effect in the broad population. Clearly the MSM are reading though ... so that's an indirect "reach".

--

"Paul", coincidentally from the Rochdale area, you are talking absolute beerish. Recommend not blogging after pubby shutty time. You boss has barred you have they not?

We will soon be resuming the Rochdale capers; so that may be of more consistent interest to you and your all night lawyer.

janestheone said...

boys stop waving your willies, no-one cares who has more visitors

Chris Paul said...

It's not that Jane. We are worried that Iain may have told poor Tony a fib and we wish to protect Iain's reputation as a blogging expert. That's all. He's the only one who's waving his willy about. Well, and Guido.

Anonymous said...

Tendency not 'tendancy' dumbo.
Oh well, what does one expect from a nulab troll, not worthy enough to shine Ian Dales boots, let alone lick'em.
How's the silly twittering Chipmunk doing? Updating her CV no doubt, along with the rest of you misguided morons!
Bring on the Election and you'll all be statistics signing on. Ha !,

janestheone said...

oh well that's all right then