Bloggasm

Major political blogs saw an average increase in page views of 48% during the first six months of 2008, compared to the last six months of 2007. Major liberal blogs saw the largest average increase with 63%, while conservative blogs experienced a 34% increase. Part of the reason the liberal blog average is higher is because two blogs had increases well above 100%, a fact that skewed results somewhat.

To conduct the study, I chose 17 major political blogs — 8 liberal and 9 conservative. For consistency, I only used blogs that have utilized Site Meter statistics. Rather than adding up unique visitors — Site Meter’s unique visitor counts are said to be extremely inaccurate — I totaled up the total page view counts for the latter half of 2007 and compared them to the total counts for the first six months of 2008.

Open Left, MyDD and Andrew Sullivan saw page view increases above 100%, while Daily Kos saw a page view increase of 91%. Crooks and Liars was the only major political blog in my study that saw an actual decrease in page views, with a drop of 9%.

In January I reported that major conservative blogs had increased their visits in 2007 while liberal blogs saw an overall decrease in visits that year. The first half of 2008 shows that conservative blogs are continuing their upward trend and liberal blogs have reversed their traffic decreases.

It’s typical for political blogs to see higher traffic during an election year, with page views taking a dive after the polling date.

William Beutler reported that Open Left recently passed its one year anniversary, and its relative newness compared to the other blogs could account for why it saw such a rapid increase in page views.

As I noted in my last study, it’s extremely difficult to make conclusions based on these findings. Also, the number of page views can be very misleading when it comes to measuring a blog’s actual readership. All statistics from Site Meter should be taken with a grain of salt.

Below are the results for individual blogs:

1. Daily Kos
Second half of 2007: 103,459,451
First half of 2008: 197,349,539
An increase of 93,890,088, or 91%

2. Crooks and Liars
Second half of 2007: 49,493,744
First half of 2008: 45,099,649
A decrease of 4,394,095, or 9%

3. Atrios/Eschaton
Second half of 2007: 17,252,683
First half of 2008: 17,892,469
An increase of 639,786, or 4%

4. Washington Monthly
Second half of 2007: 7,389,798
First half of 2008: 7,656,009
An increase of 266,211, or 4%

5. Wonkette
Second half of 2007: 21,497,800
First half of 2008: 28,118,344
An increase of 6,620,544, or 31%

6. Fire Dog Lake
Second half of 2007: 12,862,723
First half of 2008: 14,856,352
An increase of 1,993,629, or 15%

7. Open Left
Second half of 2007:2,305,104
First half of 2008: 5,603,920
An increase of 3,298,816, or 143%

8. MyDD
Second half of 2007: 6,767,232
First half of 2008: 21,796,715
An increase of 15,029,000, or 222%

9. Instapundit
Second half of 2007: 39,283,263
First half of 2008: 45,125,613
An increase of 5,842,350, or 15%

10. Michelle Malkin
Second half of 2007: 33,892,314
First half of 2008: 42,853,958
An increase of 8,961,644, or 26%

11. Hot Air
Second half of 2007:37,382,431
First half of 2008:55,157,029
An increase of 17,745,598, or 48%

12. Redstate
Second half of 2007:9,006,745
First half of 2008: 11,005,183
An increase of 1,998,438, or 22%

13. Protein Wisdom
Second half of 2007: 2,211,703
First half of 2008: 2,883,538
And increase of 671,835, or 30%

14. Andrew Sullivan
Second half of 2007: 19,849,625
First half of 2008: 42,372,950
An increase of 22,523,325, or 113%

15. Ann Althouse
Second half of 2007: 4,006,213
First half of 2008: 4,472,082
An increase of 465,869, or 12%

16. Powerline
Second half of 2007: 10,121,204
First half of 2008: 12,127,694
An increase of 2,006,490, or 20%

17. Ace of Spades
Second half of 2007: 6,804,827
First half of 2008: 8,625,039
An increase of 1,820,212, or 27%