A look at our traffic and at usage of libcom.org through 2015, and what is in store for 2016.
Mobile browsing is now a big deal
Traffic
Average monthly visits (annual change)
2009 - 130,585
2010 - 145,176 (+11%)
2011 - 207,856 (+43%)
2012 - 188,239 (-10%)
2013 - 197,845 (+5%)
2014 - 286,813 (+45%)
2015 - 275,727 (-4%)
Average monthly unique visitors
2009 - 88,731
2010 - 95,862 (+8%)
2011 - 131,108 (+37%)
2012 - 121,401 (-8%)
2013 - 129,762 (+7%)
2014 - 204,179 (+57%)
2015 - 193,162 (-5%)
Average monthly page views
2009 - 399,156
2010 - 425,007 (+6.5%)
2011 - 594,372 (+40%)
2012 - 461,677 (-23%)
2013 - 390,072 (-15%)
2014 - 539,093 (+38%)
2015 - 518,883 (-4%)
Traffic sources
The biggest referring sites (excluding search engines) last year were, in descending order, with annual change in brackets:
Facebook (+18%)
Reddit.com (-31%)
Twitter (+7 %)
Wikipedia (-56%)
duckduckgo.com (+166%)
StumbleUpon.com (-44%)
tumblr (-30%)
revleft.com (-31%)
This continues the trend of social media websites, particularly Facebook, becoming increasingly important for our traffic as the more traditional websites like Wikipedia become less so, and have done really significantly this year. 2014 was the first time referrals from mobile Facebook have become a significant part of our overall traffic. This has continued through 2015, with a further 53% increase for mobile Facebook, meaning that now nearly as many people visit through mobile Facebook as through the desktop version.
Technology
This year we are adding a new category to our analysis: the technology people use to browse the site.
| Year | Desktop | Mobile | Tablet |
| 2010 | 98% | 2% | 0% |
| 2011 | 96% | 4% | 0% |
| 2012 | 91% | 7% | 2% |
| 2013 | 84% | 12% | 5% |
| 2014 | 71% | 21% | 8% |
| 2015 | 65% | 27% | 8% |
Content
New articles per year
2004: 75
2005: 1867
2006: 1991
2007: 1225
2008: 1017
2009: 1558
2010: 1896
2011: 2167
2012: 2630
2013: 2312
2014: 1619
2015: 1174
Number of users who have posted articles per year:
2004: 14
2005: 67
2006: 70
2007: 73
2008: 158
2009: 133
2010: 180
2011: 199
2012: 202
2013: 187
2014: 170
2015: 134
Total number of users who have ever posted articles
2010: 380
2011: 481
2012: 586
2013: 662
2014: 708
2015: 758
Total articles:
2004: 2252
2005: 2327
2006: 4914
2007: 6185
2008: 7410
2009: 8427
2010: 9985
2011: 11881
2012: 14511
2013: 16814
2014: 18259
2015: 19531
User comments posted per year:
2004: 11267
2005: 42210
2006: 80823
2007: 98942
2008: 59144
2009: 45728
2010: 48802
2011: 46361
2012: 42199
2013: 23687
2014: 18457
2015: 20193
Total comments:
2011: 433663
2012: 450780
2013: 499099
2014: 517995
2015: 538130
Total users who've ever posted one or more comments:
2010: 3765
2011: 4533
2012: 5604
2013: 6554
2014: 6919
2015: 7351
Social networking
Facebook likes
2010: ~1000
2011: 4373 (+337%)
2012: 10151 (+132%)
2013: 16950 (+67%)
2014: 26355 (+55%) + 6340 working class history
2015: 30419 (+15%) +20632 working class history (+225%) +364 histoire de lutte
Twitter followers
2010: ~800
2011: 2050 (+156%)
2012: 5236 (+155%)
2013: 9951 (+90%)
2014: 13400 (+35%) +270 @wrkclasshistory
2015: 16909 (+26%) +5217 @wrkclasshistory (+1832%)
Conclusion
Overall, traffic is very slightly down on last year, but is still close to a historic high, and significantly above previous years.
The decline is probably due to the significant drop in the number of new articles posted to the site, particularly to the news and blog sections. Traffic to the sections was down 20% and 10% respectively, with visits to the library, history and forums sections being about the same or slightly higher than last year.
A significant trend has been mobile traffic. As you can see from the new table above in the space of a short number of years, traffic from mobile phones has shot up hugely, as traffic from desktops has declined. So as we prepare to redesign and upgrade the site the top priority for us is to make the site easier and better to use through your phone.
Interestingly while there has been a general decline in use of the forums over the past few years, this year there have actually been more comments posted than last.
As every year, we would like to thank everyone who has posted here, donated to us or Liked or shared our content on social media. And in particular everyone who has contributed content, particularly our regular contributors and bloggers.
We do need more people to get involved, so do please consider becoming a regular contributor with the site.
In particular we would like to reinvigorate our news and blogs sections: so if you are interested in writing or posting news for us, or blogging, particularly about current events please do let us know either through the contact us page or in the comments below, or by e-mailing libcom.org at gmail.com.
This year and other radical websites have continued to close down, and their contents being lost so if you have any spare time please do help us archive content in our library. Our site is stable, long-term, and is backed up by the British Library so our content will be available in perpetuity.
Next year we are going to be busy upgrading and redesigning the site hopefully to make it more user-friendly, easy to navigate, faster, better for mobile browsing and more modern. So if you would be able to help us out please let us know. This would also mean we will have less time to work on content so please do consider contributing. No specialist IT knowledge is required and we can show you exactly what needs doing.
We will also have associated costs, so if you can please give us a regular donation, or a one-off donation really helps as well!
Any questions about any of this information feel free to ask below.
Happy New Year everyone!
Comments
Always interesting to read
Always interesting to read these.
I'm curious how the admins feel about the overall "health" of the site? Do you all feel it meets your collective goals for the site? Are there any parts of the site you think are especially useful, need to be improved, or even jettisoned?
Also, there's been some admin turnover recently, no? No need to gossip, but just curious how that's affected the site?
Is death in June a Nazi band
Is death in June a Nazi band the top article again?
Chilli Sauce wrote: Always
Chilli Sauce
Cheers, glad you find it interesting!
Well, I think we all feel we wish we had more time to spend on it. There are quite a few things which are broken, and some things with the way the site works are pretty outdated.
So behind the scenes we are starting work on a major site redesign and upgrade. There will be some significant changes to how the site will work, which we will post in the forums about to get user views. But like the above says a big thing will be improving it for mobile browsing.
In the past year numbers of posts to the news and blogs sections have gone down quite a lot. So it would be really good to get some more people on board contributing news. And something which would be really good would be more blogs, just taking a libcom view on the big news stories. This would be really popular and would be a great addition to the site. Unfortunately we don't have time to do it ourselves.
We would also like to write the remaining introductory guides (on nationalism, race, gender, and maybe a couple of others), but time is always a problem…
One thing we are talking about is merging the news/library/history/gallery sections, as the distinctions between them don't really make sense. We will probably review the forums as well. We want to keep an area for people to have discussions, but the forum format is just really outdated. Even people who use the forums don't really use the forum navigation system much: most people use the tracker with recent posts. So we will be coming up with suggestions for what to do instead.
Fall Back left the group in comradely circumstances, but it hasn't really had an impact on the site (which I don't mean in a critical way!). We are always keen to get new people on board though.
Fall Back
No, that dropped out of the top 10. The top-10 breakdown is coming tomorrow…
Time time time!! I want more
Time time time!! I want more of it!
My New years resolution is to find more time to read and write!
I would be careful about
I would be careful about fucking around with the forum format because it does work and has for a long time. Social media like fb and so on is limited and tied in to corporate interests.
Quote: So behind the scenes
This is a brilliantly designed site already. I browse it and post exclusively on my phone and it works perfectly. Unless you can find a way to stop my texting finger from hurting I'd say leave that shit alone.
Fai1937 wrote: I would be
Fai1937
well I'm not so sure about that. Forum use across the Internet has declined massively. And just on this site forum comments have gone down by 80%, while site traffic has gone up 115%.
Webby
Thanks very much!
Although on phones some things don't work that well, for example the menus at the top, and the three column design. So what we plan to do is have something more responsive, that adjusts to the medium you're using. So it should reduce the strain on your text finger as you shouldn't have to do stuff like zooming in and out, rotating the screen, adjusting the zoom etc etc which people need to do at the moment browsing on a phone
Steven. wrote: Fall Back
Steven.
End of an era! :(
that one's excellent. the
that one's excellent. the first sentence is truly original ime.
petey wrote: that one's
petey
Which one?
Spam, I deleted it. It was
Spam, I deleted it. It was posted to numerous threads.
Thanks a lot. I would request
Thanks a lot.
I would request that people don't respond to spam. Please just click the Spam button to report it. If people respond to it then after the spam gets deleted you get left with comments which don't make sense.
Steven. wrote: Thanks a
Steven.
in this case i did both (report and respond). you can certainly delete my comment.