Statistics For 2011

I know that you got a preview of this earlier today, as a part of the WordPress Generated: 2011 In Review, but I wanted to post a more thorough (less graphic-intensive entry).  In my entries at the end of last year I delved into my statistics in a serious and fairly comprehensive way. I’m not sure if I’m up to that today, but we’ll see how it turns out.  I guess to start out, we should look at the traffic.

For the daily averages, this broke down to:

Not sure what was happening in March – beyond SITE, which you would think wouldn’t generate as much traffic as VSS – but it was a busy month nonetheless.  In fact, if you look at the Statistics For March 2011, there doesn’t appear to be anything that usual.  For example, of the top ten entries that month, items 6 through 10 were all from that month.

6. Online Teacher Certification Announced At CUE 2011 – Leading Edge Certification
7. Guest Blogger – Visit To Michigan Connections Academy
8. SITE 2011 – Creating A Model For Change With Online AP Courses In A Nonschool Hours Charter School
9. Review – Frog Dissection
10. Attn: K-12 Educators: The QM Program Needs YOU

Which isn’t that unusual, as there are normally two to five in most months.

Speaking of top entries, the top twenty entries for 2011 were (and their original posting dates):

1. Problem With Cyber Charter Schools – PA & NJ Edition (2010)
2. Questions About The School Of Tomorrow (2010)
3. Webinar Recording – Blended Learning: Make it Work for Your District (2010)
4. Online High School Credit Recovery: A Free Webinar Filled With Real-World Best Practices (2010)
5. Presentation: Visible Learning, Tomorrow’s Schools, The Mindsets That Make The Difference In Education – John Hattie (2010)
6. Online-Teaching Standards (2008)
7. Statistics For December 2009 (2009)
8. Greatest Benefits Of K-12 Online Learning And Visible Learning (2010)
9. Statistics for February 2010 (2010)
10. Online Schools Costs Vs. Brick And Mortar? (2008)
11. Westwood Cyber High School (2008)
12. Review – 5 Steps To A 5: 500 AP US History Questions To Know By Test Day (2011)
13. Consolidation: K12, Inc. Acquires Kaplan Virtual Education (2011)
14. Florida Virtual School Named As Top 100 Learning Organization In First Annual Awards Program (2011)
15. Online Education – In Ontario (2009)
16. Newsline – November 2009 (2009)
17. Memphis City Schools Add Online Learning Graduation Requirement (2010)
18. Dissertation Advice: Impact Of Virtual Schools For At Risk Students (2011)
19. AERA 2012 Annual Meeting – July 22, 2011 Submission Deadline (2011)
20. Florida Virtual School Named Champion At Sterling Storyboard Competition (2011)

Let’s see what information we can mine from these entries.  There were three entries from 2008, three from 2009, eight from 2010 (including the top five), and six from 2011 (the first of which came in at #12).  It seems entries like Online-Teaching Standards, Online Schools Costs Vs. Brick And Mortar?, and Westwood Cyber High School have staying power.

Beyond that, there are three entries about full-time programs – including the top two entries which express concerns about full-time programs (i.e., Problem With Cyber Charter Schools – PA & NJ Edition, Questions About The School Of Tomorrow, and Westwood Cyber High School), two entries about the Florida Virtual School (i.e., Florida Virtual School Named As Top 100 Learning Organization In First Annual Awards Program and Florida Virtual School Named Champion At Sterling Storyboard Competition), two entries about the work of John Hattie (i.e., Presentation: Visible Learning, Tomorrow’s Schools, The Mindsets That Make The Difference In Education – John Hattie and Greatest Benefits Of K-12 Online Learning And Visible Learning), and two entries about at-risk/credit recover (i.e., Online High School Credit Recovery: A Free Webinar Filled With Real-World Best Practices and Dissertation Advice: Impact Of Virtual Schools For At Risk Students).  Aside from these relevant categories, there were also two statistics entries included in the list.

These entries were made popular by the following search terms:

1. statistics
2. blended learning
3. generational differences
4. dissertation
5. visible learning
6. businessman
7. mobile learning
8. journal of computing in teacher education
9. virtual school meanderings
10. blogging
11. connections academy
12. brick and mortar school
13. westwood cyber high school
14. learning
15. online learning
16. innosight institute
17. westwood cyber school
18. school of tomorrow philippines subjects
19. georgia cyber academy
20. virtual high school ontario review

I should note that “statistics” numbered 4,592, while the #2 item – blended learning – only numbered 1,083 and the #3 item – generational differences – only numbered 654.  All of the others were less than 500, with all items from #15 onwards having less than 100.

Beyond search engines, which generated almost 7000 hits, the other main sources of traffic came from:

• Twitter (3,374)
• WordPress.com (2,160) / en.wordpress.com (498)
• Facebook (1,373)
• Google Reader (1,072)
• flvs.net (1,064)
• iconfactory.com (499)
• plurk.com (445)
• moodle.learnnc.org (422)
• mail.yahoo.com (403)
• schooltechleadership.org (277)
• StumbleUpon (264)

Interesting to see that Twitter and Facebook are so high on the list; and thanks to the folks at the Florida Virtual School for the linked traffic.

Moving beyond the WordPress statistics, if you look at what information I can gleam from my Google Reader, you see:

Note that the items read are ones that I go to find to be able to link to in entries like this one.  If you look at my FeedBurner statistics, you can’t get a yearly breakdown – only daily, last seven days, last 30 days, or all time.  Below is an edited version of the all-time graph.

But I can say that I began 2011 with 95 subscribers and a reach of 35.  The highest reach that I had during the year occurred on 16 June 2011, when it hit 109.  I ended the year with 225 subscribers and a reach of 47.  Interestingly, I’ve had a few spots where the number of subscribers have decreased , the most recent of which was from 24 October when there were 236 subscribers to 27 November when it went down to 219 subscribers.  Interesting that I was losing subscribers during the Virtual School Symposium.

Finally, turning my attention to my old blog site – which oddly enough is still generating traffic.  Blogger keeps some internal statistics now, although no where near as robust as WordPress.  However, I can report the following traffic.

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
2010	770	801	668	1019	721	700	623	625	929	1075	992	823	9746

These numbers are similar to the ones that the StatCounter that I installed on my old blog site collected.

	Page Loads	Unique Visits	First Time Visits	Returning Visits
Total	1,172	977	943	34
Average	98	81	79	3
Month	Page Loads	Unique Visits	First Time Visits	Returning Visits
Dec 2011	75	69	67	2
Nov 2011	77	69	67	2
Oct 2011	99	85	83	2
Sep 2011	78	67	63	4
Aug 2011	71	63	63	0
Jul 2011	77	69	60	9
Jun 2011	88	75	73	2
May 2011	84	70	70	0
Apr 2011	117	97	96	1
Mar 2011	133	94	91	3
Feb 2011	131	103	96	7
Jan 2011	142	116	114	2

Probably most interesting is to look at the three tables together.

Source	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
This Blog – WordPress	11,384	10,725	12,270	10,936	9,414	10,816	9,444	10,275	9,615	11,259	8,457	7,418	122,012
Old Blog Site – Blogger	770	801	668	1019	721	700	623	625	929	1075	992	823	9746
Old Blog Site – StatCounter (unique visitors)	116	103	94	97	70	75	69	63	67	85	69	69	977

There is little consistency in the monthly traffic trends experienced by each blog (and given the amount of traffic generated by search engines I would have expected to see a little more consistency in the ups and the downs).

Anyway, that’s about two hours spent on this entry, so I think its time to call it quits.  Until the end of 2012, keep reading…