Bloggasm

While it wasn’t surprising that the unveiling of Apple’s iPad would begin trending on Twitter, I began looking around for ways to measure how big of news it actually was. So I visited Gizmodo, arguably the most popular gadget blog, and checked out its Sitemeter stats.

On an average day, Gizmodo receives over 4 million page views, an incredible number. But what about today? In the hour that Steve Jobs was making his announcement, Gizmodo received over 1.3 million page views.

There has been a ton of speculation over which is a bigger news event: State of the Union or Apple’s announcement. It’ll be interesting to check out the site statistics on sites like Daily Kos and Instapundit during Obama’s speech.

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This is extraordinary. Up until recently, Daily Kos was the undisputed king when it comes to political blog traffic, having double the traffic of its nearest conservative competitor, Hot Air. But I just checked the Sitemeter statistics for both Hot Air and Daily Kos, and it appears that the two sites are now neck and neck.

I’ve been documenting the shifting web traffic trends in political blogs for months. Some have argued that the Democratic Obama administration and Congress is fueling reader interest in conservative blogs as they’ve become part of the opposition.

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I surveyed the traffic stats of nine Gawker media blogs — comparing their traffic in the last five months of ‘08 to the first five months of ‘09 — and found that they experienced a 17% increase in page views during this period. For the first five months of ‘09 the blogs showed a combined 1.4 billion page views, compared to 1.19 billion in the last five months of ‘09 — a jump of over 200 million.

To conduct this survey I compiled page view data from Gawker Media’s Sitemeter stats from each of the blogs. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

Of all the blogs, the science fiction blog Io9 saw the sharpest increase, with a 44% jump in traffic. Fleshbot, the company’s sex blog, was the only one of the nine blogs to show a slight decrease in traffic — less than 2%. Gizmodo remained by far Gawker’s biggest traffic generator, with more than 380 million page views so far in 09. Io9 saw the least traffic with about 64 million page views.

Keep in mind, however, that Gawker Media has recently sold off several blogs and shut down others, so while most these individual blogs saw an increase, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire company’s traffic is up on a whole.

Complete traffic statistics below the jump
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It’s a well known trend that web traffic on political sites falls immediately after election season, but how much has it fallen this time around, and have any blogs or political ideologies weathered the off-season better than others?

To find this out, I surveyed the traffic stats of 20 major political blogs — split evenly between left and right of center— and compared the number of page views from October 2008 to May 2009. For consistency, only blogs that openly displayed their traffic statistics through Sitemeter were surveyed. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

I found that page views for all political blogs fell 109,719,615, or 53%. Right of center blogs weathered the post-election season a little better, falling only 37%, while blogs that were left-of-center fell by 64%.

Some blogs did better than others. Instapundit, for instance, was the only blog to show a slight increase in page views between the two months. Hot Air and Ann Althouse also saw a much less significant drop compared to all other blogs. Out of all the blogs surveyed, MyDD saw the most significant drop, with a decrease of 80% in pageviews.

Specific traffic numbers come after the jump.
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In the three months following the November 08 election, political blog traffic has dropped significantly. I surveyed the traffic stats of 20 major political blogs — split evenly between liberal and conservative — and compared the number of page views for the three months leading up to the election to the three months after. In that time period liberal blogs dropped from 302,711,611 total page views to 126,502,281 (58%) while conservative sites dropped from 233,950,986 to 149,744,909 (36%).

Of all the blogs I surveyed, Instapundit experienced the smallest drop, with only 5% less page views. Mydd experienced the sharpest drop (65%) and Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, and Hugh Hewitt all saw a decrease of more than 60% of their page views during this time period.

For consistency, only blogs that openly displayed their traffic statistics through Sitemeter were surveyed. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

Complete traffic stats are after the jump.
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Liberal blogs saw an 18% increase in traffic this week compared to last week while conservative blogs saw an increase of 16%.

The survey of 10 liberal blogs and 10 conservative blogs found that liberal blogs experienced an increase of 1,634,933 page views this week and conservative blogs showed an increase of 1,761,430. The increase in part could be due to reported heavy internet traffic during the presidential inauguration.

For consistency, only blogs that openly displayed their traffic statistics through Sitemeter were surveyed. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

Althouse.blogspot.com saw the sharpest increase, with 37%. Gatewaypundit.blogspot.com was the only blog that saw a decrease in traffic, with a drop of 5%.

Complete traffic stats below:

Liberal Blogs:

http://dailykos.com/

last week: 5,552,953
this week: 6,640,874
Change: An increase of 1,087,921, or 20%6

http://crooksandliars.com/

last week: 1,268,953
this week: 1,370,516
Change: An increase of 101,563, or 7%

http://firedoglake.com

last week 628,761
this week: 741,328
Change: An increase of 112,567, or 18%

http://www.eschatonblog.com

last week: 524,818
this week: 574,641
Change: An increase of 49,823, or 9%

http://americablog.blogspot.com/

last week: 390,950
this week: 445,725
Change: An increase of 54,775, or 14%

http://washingtonmonthly.com/

last week: 341,747
this week: 442,442
Change: An increase of 100,695, or 29%

http://www.mydd.com/

last week: 176,932
this week: 199,731
Change: An increase of 22,799, or 13%

http://www.talkleft.com/

last week: 188,384
this week: 235,284
Change: An increase of 46,900, or 25%

http://openleft.com/

last week: 158,550
this week: 187,908
Change: An increase of 29,358, or 19%

http://www.sadlyno.com/

last week: 104,412
this week: 132,944
Change: An increase of 28,532, or 27%

Total last week: 9,336,460
Total This week: 10,971,393
Change: An increase of 1,634,933, or 18%

***

Conservative Blogs:

http://hotair.com/

last week: 3,567,088
this week: 4,252,906
Change: An increase of 685,818, or 20%

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/

last week: 2,408,938
this week: 2,577,372
Change: An increase of 168,434, or 7%

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

last week: 1,380,442
this week: 1,670,823
Change: An increase of 290,381, or 21%

http://michellemalkin.com/

last week: 1,937,467
this week: 2,232,251
Change: An increase of 294,784, or 15%

http://www.ace.mu.nu/

last week: 535,585
this week: 650,258
Change: An increase of 114,673, or 21%

http://www.redstate.com/

last week: 451,878
this week: 543,431
Change: An increase of 91,553, or 20%

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

last week: 275,583
this week: 261,191
Change: A decrease of 14,392, or 5%

http://althouse.blogspot.com/

last week: 256,984
this week: 351,316
Change: An increase of 94,332, or 37%

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog

last week: 181,104
this week: 209,440
Change: An increase of 28,336, or 16%

http://patterico.com/

last week: 84,175
this week: 91,686
Change: An increase of 7,511, or 9%

Total last week: 11,079,244
Total this week: 12,840,674
Change: An increase of 1,761,430, or 16%

Liberal blogs saw a 2% decrease in traffic this week compared to last week while conservative blogs saw a slight increase of 4%. The survey of 10 liberal blogs and 10 conservative blogs found that liberal blogs saw a decrease of 177,135 page views this week and conservative blogs experienced an increase of 426,084.

For consistency, only blogs that openly displayed their traffic statistics through Sitemeter were surveyed. The number of page views does not represent the number of unique visitors to a site, but rather the number of times a page was loaded.

Althouse.blogspot.com saw the sharpest increase, with 12%. Sadlyno.com saw the sharpest decrease, with 21%.

Complete traffic stats below:

Liberal Blogs:

http://dailykos.com/

last week: 5,719,847
this week: 5,552,953
Change: A decrease of 166,894, or 3%

http://crooksandliars.com/

last week: 1,157,583
this week: 1,268,953
Change: An increase of 111,370, or 10%

http://firedoglake.com

last week: 614,453
this week 628,761
Change: An increase of 14,308, or 2%

http://www.eschatonblog.com

last week: 501,760
this week: 524,818
Change: An increase of 23,058, or 5%

http://americablog.blogspot.com/

last week: 378,595
this week: 390,950
Change: An increase of 12,355, or 3%

http://washingtonmonthly.com/

last week 332,815
this week: 341,747
Change: An increase of 8,932, or 3%

http://www.mydd.com/

last week: 202,734
this week: 176,932
Change: A decrease of 25,802, or 13%

http://www.talkleft.com/

last week: 192,255
this week: 188,384
Change: A decrease of 3,871, or 2%

http://openleft.com/

last week: 177,058
this week: 158,550
Change: A decrease of 18,508, or 10%

http://www.sadlyno.com/

last week: 132,972
this week: 104,412
Change: A decrease of 28,560, or 21%

Total last week: 9,513,595
Total this week: 9,336,460
Change: A decrease of 177,135, or 2%

***

Conservative Blogs:

http://hotair.com/

last week: 3,330,026
this week: 3,567,088
Change: An increase of 237,062, or 7%

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/

last week: 2,443,462
this week: 2,408,938
Change: A decrease of 34,524, or 1%

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

last week: 1,387,799
this week: 1,380,442
Change: A decrease of 7,357, or 1%

http://michellemalkin.com/

last week: 1,750,574
this week: 1,937,467
Change: An increase of 186,893, or 11%

http://www.ace.mu.nu/

last week: 556,612
this week: 535,585
Change: A decrease of 21,027, or 4%

http://www.redstate.com/

last week: 408,268
this week: 451,878
Change: An increase of 43,610, or 11%

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

last week: 266,273
this week: 275,583
Change: An increase of 9,310, or 3%

http://althouse.blogspot.com/

last week: 229,397
this week: 256,984
Change: An increase of 27,587, or 12%

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog

last week: 197,687
this week: 181,104
Change: A decrease of 16,583, or 8%

http://patterico.com/

last week: 83,062
this week: 84,175
Change: An increase of 1,113, or 1%

Total last week: 10,653,160
Total this week: 11,079,244
Change: An increase of 426,084, or 4%