Arkansas Blog

Arkansassports360.com only gets 1,557 U.S. visitors per month. That's even less than TalkBusiness.net. In comparison, hogwired.com gets 39,365 U.S. visitors per month.

Here are some other stats for state websites (listed in highest to lowest visitors):

Arkansas.gov
238,057 U.S. visitors per month

Arkansas.com
197,658 U.S. visitors per month

uark.edu
181,488 U.S. visitors per month

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
arkansasonline.com
108,458 U.S. visitors per month
ardemgaz.com
23,123 U.S. visitors per month
jobsarkansas.com
9,969 U.S. visitors per month

KARK
ArkansasMatters.com
90,471 U.S. visitors per month
kark.com
12,181 U.S. visitors per month

KATV.com
84,498 U.S. visitors per month

ualr.edu
84,038 U.S. visitors per month

FOX 16
fox16.com
62,573 U.S. visitors per month
klrt.com
1,280 U.S. visitors per month

MagicSprings.com
56,551 U.S. visitors per month

kait8.com
54,017 U.S. visitors per month

ArkansasStateParks.com
47,873 U.S. visitors per month

hogwired.com
39,365 U.S. visitors per month

ArkansasBusiness.com
37,529 U.S. visitors per month

Arktimes.com
33,493 U.S. visitors per month

Jonesborosun.com
31,409 U.S. visitors per month

metbank.com
22,180 U.S. visitors per month

Arkansasnews.com
18,687 U.S. visitors per month

aetn.org
8,326 U.S. visitors per month

KTHV
todaysthv.com
102,857 U.S. visitors per month
kthv.com
5,295 U.S. visitors per month

Batesville Daily Guard
14,174 U.S. visitors per month

littlerock.com
13,768 U.S. visitors per month

talkbusiness.net
2,169 U.S. visitors per month

Arkansassports360.com
1,557 U.S. visitors per month

Seems to me KTHV should be a little higher on that list, if I am reading the numbers right and if the list is truly meant to be in descending order.

Hmm.... those university websites..... kinda easy to generate traffic when, as a student, you must sign on there to check your campus mail, participate in online classes and discussion boards for classes, find out schedules and phone numbers for professors and administrators, etc..... would like to see uca.edu's numbers (maybe only UA system numbers are available)

Ever heard of a captive audience?

So, what's your point? The more visitors you have the more accurate you are? I think FOX News should prove the fallacy of that argument, if that in fact is your point. If that's not your point, I'd be interested to know exactly what it is. I'm slow like that.

A note about the traffic numbers from Meet John Doe. Those numbers are way off what Google Analytics tells us about ArkansasSports360.com and ArkansasBusiness.com.

According to Google:

- ArkansasSports360.com had 36,502 unique visitors in the last 30 days, with 60,382 visits total
- ArkansasBusiness.com had 80,279 unique visitors in the last 30 days, with 217,659 total visits

I guess I'll geek out a minute and talk Google Analytics vs. other traffic numbers:

Meet John Doe's numbers appear to come from Compete.com, which bases its traffic on a sample of users (they say 2 million-plus) who respond to surveys and have given them permission to see what sites they visit.

Compete is similar to Alexa, Comscore and others in that they don't directly measure traffic across a large portion of the Web. They rely on survey samples and traffic derived from folks who, for example, download and install a special toolbar to their browser. That toolbar tracks what sites those people visit and reports the numbers back to Compete.

Google Analytics, however, measures all the traffic coming into a site -- no survey sample, no toolbars, just pure total traffic. Webmasters who use Analytics give Google front row access to the numbers that other services don't have.

So while Compete asks 10 people on the street if they've been to your site, Google stands at the door and counts them as they come in.

Of course, Google Analytics doesn't put numbers for client sites out there for everyone to see. I can't, for example, go into Analytics to get Arktimes.com traffic numbers (assuming they even use Analytics) because that data is available only to the site's Webmaster.

Compete, Alexa and Comscore perform better with major Web sites -- those with 500,000 unique visitors or more, which is why the big boys like Yahoo!, MSNBC, CNN and Drudge quote them all the time. It's simply a question of massive popularity and sample size. But for smaller sites, the numbers can be wildly inaccurate.

- Lance Turner, Internet Editor, Arkansas Business Publishing Group

ARK. BLOG: Lance, thanks for the explanation.

For what it's worth: Arkansas Times subscribes to Urchin, which is a Google service. We had about 94,000 unique visitors in May, according to the Urchin count, and more than 154,000 visits.

How often does Soiree get visited? Or do guests have to pay to get to that site?

What's with all these non sequiturs?

UA is reportedly hiring a new track coach from UNI and everyone comes back talking about statistics on website visits.

Has this site been taken over by dweebs?

Google Analytics is still in beta and the numbers are only estimates.

Sounds like Lance doesn't like the low numbers. What do you think the "real" numbers are then?

Sorry... confused Google Analytics with Google Trends.

Only website owners know their actual traffic and they have good reason to inflate those numbers. Often they include traffic generated by bots and not actual people. Most websites do not get as much traffic as they think or they tell their advertisers.

The numbers above are all apple to apple comparisons, and yes some are out of order.

This thread is simply unbelievable!

Arkansas is hiring a new track coach and the conversation veers off into some arcane discussion about web traffic and other irrelevancies. A sports discussion for ADD adolescent computer geeks.

So...What about the new coach? Looks like he has big shoes to fill.
Is he young? What kind of "track record?"

Obviously nobody cared about a new track coach. I'm a Hogs fan but I've never known the name of the UofA track coach.

Back to being off topic...

Don't newspapers have to publish their circulation figures? If there is such a law or requirement does the same apply to web sites yet? Or do advertisers just have to take the word of the site owner?