Board Traffic - popularity rising

[Jon von der Heyden]

It's a good site. By that, i mean it's easy to navigate through, it's not overly moderated in the Forums and there's no complaints if a novice answers a question.

The mods here are determined to keep a friendly atmosphere and avoid being too strict. We were all newbies at one time, and for me it's through determination to answer questions I don't know the answers to that develops my excel skills. Almost everything I know has been learned as a result of participation at this forum. And having been here for a fair few years now I recall a number of 'big-hitters' starting out at basic level... Any novice member here is most welcome to participate in any questions I ask!

I was so glad to find this place. I wonder if the spike in traffic here is due to the Microsoft Office Groups/Boards closing down on June 1, 2010.

That may have a role to play. I never even knew that though. Welcome to the board!

 

[Domski]

Any novice member here is most welcome to participate in any questions I ask!

Anything that improves the quality of your answers should be actively encouraged

Dom

 

[MrExcel]

This is definitely an interesting thread!

Since this turned into a long post, I want to again express my thanks to everyone who hangs out here. It is the community that makes the board great.

There wasn't any testing going on recently that would have caused the spike in traffic. Also, we have a site setting that limits the number of Google spiders to some number like 7 at a time. It would be interesting to see if other search engines are crawling.

Personally, I am always promoting the board as an amazing community and an excellent resource where people can find help 24x7. However, even though I do a lot of seminars, that still only reaches 50 people on any given day, and perhaps only 5% of those people remember the site.

One of the authors whom I publish is a moderator at UtterAccess.com. I will check to see if they experienced a similar surge after Microsoft closed their old boards.

I really suspect that the surge in traffic is from Microsoft. I did a little video interview about PowerPivot that posted somewhere on a Microsoft property this spring. Plus, the Office.com team has learned that I will gladly let them republish just about anything that they ask for. This creates articles that actually show up in Excel Help, with those articles providing a link back to MrExcel.com. I am not a person who checks the statistics frequently, but I remember that after my first article on a Microsoft website, they instantly became the #1 source of inbound links.

OK, after writing that last paragraph, I did go run the statistics from Google Analytics. Interesting numbers for the last 30 days:

• 1,633,616 visits.
• 75% of those visits were to a single page. I like to think that this is where people found the answer on the first page and then went back to work. It could also be where someone was looking for an answer about Excel chewing gum and realized they were at the wrong place.
• Of the other 416K visits, they visited an average of 4.52 pages.
• Sources of the traffic:

1. Google with 1.3 million visits originating from a Google search
2. Bing with 45K inbound visits
3. Yahoo with 14K inbound visits
4. Search.com with 2847 inbound visits
5. Ask.com with 1863

The top two keywords on an inbound search are "MrExcel" and "Mr Excel". After that, though, it is:

• vlookup
• excel find duplicates
• countif multiple criteria
• find duplicates in excel
• excel countif multiple criteria
• cagr formula excel (!)
• check box in excel
• excel
• excel checkbox
• sumif two conditions
• how to find duplicates in excel
• excel concatenate cells

...the rest of the list includes 574,157 other keywords used to find the site.

Randomly, here are keywords #1000 through 1010. Each of these were used 50 times to find us:

• access convert text to number
• activeworkbook.sendmail
• convert seconds to hours minutes seconds
• display formulas in excel
• duplicate declaration in current scope
• excel current row
• excel elapsed time
• excel fixed objects will move
• excel macro move down one cell
• .snp file

OK...and I will admit that I never check the statistics because once I sign in, then I start spending way too much time checking statistics. Here are the 10 keywords that were the 10,000th most popular. All of these generated 9 inbound visits (and Google clearly is using a sort where everything tied at 9 is presented alphabetically):

• excel macro select current row
• excel macro select printer
• excel macro shortcut
• excel macro sort
• excel macro to insert picture
• excel macro to save file
• excel macro tutorial pdf
• excel markup formula
• excel max absolute value
• excel maximum rows and columns

At keyword #250,000, these all had 1 visit:

• excel last used cell in a range
• excel last used cell in column
• excel last used cells
• etc.

Back to the big question...is traffic up?
For the 30 days ending July 29, 2010:
1,633,616 visits from 1,111,990 visitors
For the 30 days ending July 30, 2009:
1,310,472 visits from 877,121 visitors
That is 27% growth in one year... cool, isn't it?

Sorry for such a long post. Again, if you've read this far... thanks for being a part of this community!

Bill

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Interesting stuff Bill, and confirms that this place is growing in popularity every day. And thanks extended to you to for providing us with the framework for this community!

 

[schielrn]

Interesting stuff Bill, and confirms that this place is growing in popularity every day. And thanks extended to you to for providing us with the framework for this community!

x2

Its always nice seeing statistics and trends, that is partly why many of us love Excel anyways.

 

[TinaP]

After reading Bill's post, I wonder how all that data would present itself in a pivot table.

Maybe it's time to take a break from Excel.

 

[snowblizz]

Ah-ha!

So I haven't been making up unsubstantiated rumours when claiming that the usage of Internet forums as a source of support will become more popular in the future. That's a relief.

Being able to access a place like MrExcel is as close to having your personal Excel guru sitting besides you as most people can get.

The realisation that you can solve your problems by checking/asking on-line seems to be slowly filtering through the population. Searching for an answer on-line is fairly common. Checking a forum much less so still. What makes a casual surfer convert into a participator is an interesting question I'd like to answer. Along with a multitude of other interesting questions tied to the use of Internet, and in particular forums, as a source of support.

 

[Domski]

What makes a casual surfer convert into a participator is an interesting question I'd like to answer.

Honestly, I was bored at work.

Dom

 

[snowblizz]

Honestly, I was bored at work.

Dom

Thanks!
One down 155,173 more to go then... keep 'em coming.

 

[TinaP]

What makes a casual surfer convert into a participator is an interesting question I'd like to answer.

Desperation. I needed to sort out a macro, fast.