A user with an especially attractive handle ("bleachedanus") posted one of my blog entries to Reddit. I didn't ask for this, but it was nice I suppose, and it did give me the opportunity to look at some interesting Reddit user statistics.
The story stayed on the "hot" (front) page for about 10 hours on the "overnight" shift, from approximately 20:00 PDT on a Friday to 06:00 PDT the next day. Because this blog gets comparatively little traffic (sigh) I could easily carve out some analysis by looking at the visits to that one page. I'm restricting my number to just the data from the first night (20h to 00h), as that let's me do an "apples-to-apple" comparisons.
The Reddit link produced about 14,500 unique visits the first night. Reddit visitors overwhelmingly use Firefox (68%), with Safari a distant second (17%), and IE (8%) and Opera (3.5%) behind that. Quite a few people also seem to be using mobile phones to read Reddit (2.5%). Most folks are still on a flavor of MS Windows (56%), but Mac OS X (29%) and Linux (12%) have respectable showings.
More interestingly to me, because I could count the number of times that page was served from the web server, and compare it to Google Adsense and Analytics data, I can make some guesses about the percentages of browsers that use ad-blocking and JavaScript-blocking software.
The Google Analytics numbers are running about 15% behind the web server logs. Since Google Analytics uses JavaScript to track the visit, I'm guessing that means around 15% of Reddit users have JavaScript blocked by default (probably with the excellent NoScript extension, which I also use) or just block Google Analytics altogether. Probably about one-fifth of Firefox users blocked JavaScript.
Comparing the web server logs to the Google Adsense counts is a bit trickier, as I have to discount the 15% of the NoScript users who won't get the JavaScript-served ads. However I think it's probably reasonable to assume that if someone if selectively blocking JavaScript, they are also blocking most ads (I know I do that too). Only 65% of the visits resulted in a served ad. That means that about 20% of Reddit readers are running some sort of ad blocker without NoScript. (Or in other words, about one-third block ads).
Geographically, the results might be a bit skewed as the link was mostly on the Reddit front page overnight in North America. Still, just looking at the 8 PM to midnight numbers, the vast bulk of the visitors are from the US (79%), with Canada (8.5%), Australia (2.8%), and the UK (2.2%) making up most of the rest.
Finally, of the 18,000 new visitors, only about 2% clicked around the site a bit from the initial landing page. If this were a commercial operation, that would stink. But since we're just a little old country blog I don't mind too much. Also, 1.2% of you Reddit folks are still on dial-up lines -- WTF?
The story stayed on the "hot" (front) page for about 10 hours on the "overnight" shift, from approximately 20:00 PDT on a Friday to 06:00 PDT the next day. Because this blog gets comparatively little traffic (sigh) I could easily carve out some analysis by looking at the visits to that one page. I'm restricting my number to just the data from the first night (20h to 00h), as that let's me do an "apples-to-apple" comparisons.
The Reddit link produced about 14,500 unique visits the first night. Reddit visitors overwhelmingly use Firefox (68%), with Safari a distant second (17%), and IE (8%) and Opera (3.5%) behind that. Quite a few people also seem to be using mobile phones to read Reddit (2.5%). Most folks are still on a flavor of MS Windows (56%), but Mac OS X (29%) and Linux (12%) have respectable showings.
More interestingly to me, because I could count the number of times that page was served from the web server, and compare it to Google Adsense and Analytics data, I can make some guesses about the percentages of browsers that use ad-blocking and JavaScript-blocking software.
The Google Analytics numbers are running about 15% behind the web server logs. Since Google Analytics uses JavaScript to track the visit, I'm guessing that means around 15% of Reddit users have JavaScript blocked by default (probably with the excellent NoScript extension, which I also use) or just block Google Analytics altogether. Probably about one-fifth of Firefox users blocked JavaScript.
Comparing the web server logs to the Google Adsense counts is a bit trickier, as I have to discount the 15% of the NoScript users who won't get the JavaScript-served ads. However I think it's probably reasonable to assume that if someone if selectively blocking JavaScript, they are also blocking most ads (I know I do that too). Only 65% of the visits resulted in a served ad. That means that about 20% of Reddit readers are running some sort of ad blocker without NoScript. (Or in other words, about one-third block ads).
Geographically, the results might be a bit skewed as the link was mostly on the Reddit front page overnight in North America. Still, just looking at the 8 PM to midnight numbers, the vast bulk of the visitors are from the US (79%), with Canada (8.5%), Australia (2.8%), and the UK (2.2%) making up most of the rest.
Finally, of the 18,000 new visitors, only about 2% clicked around the site a bit from the initial landing page. If this were a commercial operation, that would stink. But since we're just a little old country blog I don't mind too much. Also, 1.2% of you Reddit folks are still on dial-up lines -- WTF?
David,
You sent a spike of visitors my way too. You+Reddit sent about 1700 visitors to post.
Below is another you may like.
http://www.wlanbook.com/netstumbler-alternatives/ ;-)
Posted by: WLANBook.com | March 29, 2008 at 08:05 PM
Reddit probably has those 1.2% on dial up specifically because it is NOT a graphic intensive website.
It is down and dirty text and links. Ideal for dial-up.
And I suspect most people on dial-up aren't choosing to be on it, they are in a place where that is the only alternative.
Posted by: Tom Steele | July 21, 2008 at 09:17 AM