Guest post by WUWT moderator Mike Lorrey
One of the nice tools that alexa.com has is that it lets you compare multiple sites against each other. For those with competition of either economic or political nature, this is of high importance to gauge how well one is doing achieving one’s marketshare or mindshare goals, and how badly one’s competition is stumbling in delivering its message or attracting customers.
Today I did a four-way comparison between WUWT, Climate Progress and Real Climate, as well as Climateaudit.org, run by our good friend Steve McIntyre, going back through the entire traffic record that alexa has for these sites.
As you can see, there is a rather dramatic evolution over time.
Prior to the 2008 US Presidential election of Barack Obama, three of the four blogs were pretty well competitive (realclimate.org was always the least popular, indicating the general public got that this was an astroturfing site by climate alarmists who tolerated no dissent). Even though Steve McIntyre tended to be the most technical, he still attracted a competitive following. His television appearances and congressional testimony really helped his exposure even if the layman had difficulty avoiding the glaze-over on some of his blog content. After the election, when it became clear that climate change legislation was a top priority for this president, people clearly started educating themselves about it. Our Surfacestations.org project and the resulting report brought us additional attention in the major media. WUWT started clearly distinguishing itself as providing content that was understandable to the layman, did not talk down to the average bloke (like was typical at CP and RC) and did not regularly attack people based on their political leanings. Commentary from all directions was encouraged, with postings by non-skeptic scientists to provide a balanced view, and which only limited commentary when it came to personal attacks and off-topic thread hijacking (again, unlike CP and RC).
This resulted in our weblog award for 2008 as the number one science blog, beating out alarmist blogs, leading to much tooth gnashing by the warmist press.
Our popularity grew as we reported on the growing controversies over FOIA compliance, IPCC dissenting opinions, the dendro-wars, and the continuing spotlessness of the sun while arctic ice coverage recovered from its 2007 low, meeting our predictions and smashing the hopes of the AGW alarmists.
Then Climategate and the CRUtape Letters hit the blogosphere. The alexa stats clearly demonstrate who won the narrative with the public with a dramatic step change in the popularity of WUWT along with a crash of CP and RC after brief spurts. Similarly, climateaudit.org reached its highest ever rankings since the FOIA requests of Steve and friends were so central to the scandal. WUWT peaked several times into the top 10,000 websites globally.
As of this writing, WUWT is ranked #6 by Alexa in the world for Environmental websites, not just climate blog sites. We are higher ranked than the Environmental Working Group, WWF, National Wildlife Federation, Mother Earth News, The Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy and The Environmental Defense Fund. We rank just behind The Oil Drum, the primary Peak Oil website.
While things have settled down a bit since climategate broke, we are seeing a recent spurt of activity due in part to Anthony’s speaking tour, where he has spoken to packed and enthusiastic crowds. As we add more reference pages on different topics, we expect to see more traffic grow as these references become additional traffic generators in their own right.
We should reach our 50 millionth website hit some time this coming week, a major milestone in the development of this site. Stay tuned for the announcement.
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BoB – only “peer reviewed” blogs count? HAHAHAHAHAHA
And Oil Drum truly is a very good site, for those who haven’t visited. I don’t agree with everything, but what I like best is that they do a very good job of focusing on the issues that people in the oil business are worried about. They are very oil specific, which is why most readers are probably in the industry. But that makes the commentary very useful, since much of it is from professionals.
One last comment:
idlex wrote: “Judging by the scale on the left had side, it looks to me like you’ve shown the graph upside down, and WUWT has been losing traffic steadily over the past couple of years, with a particularly steep plunge at the end of 2009. ”
Well, dontcha know that negative correlation is just as significant as positive correlation? In fact I’ve been told there’s no difference at all!!!
Natural result of hard and honest work.
Congratulations. Keep going, Anthony et al.
tallbloke sez: “The clue is in the word ‘Ranking’”
Ah!!!!
[reply:] Ker-ching! the penny drops. 😉 RT-mod
tallbloke says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:39 am
Ric Werme says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:32 am (Edit)
Anyone have a solar cooker I can borrow tonight?
I always have trouble getting my solar cooker to work at night. Can’t think why…
Well, ya see? Yer not use’n enough CO2.
If you inject some CO2 into it, why the latent heat of the cake will be amplified by the CO2, and the cake will bake in no time flat!
Good job, people….
Henry chance says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:34 am
‘This site is classy and competant.’
Unlike your spelling!
[/pedant off]
Enonym says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
“I would be careful to take the number of visitors as a quality indicator. As for my self, I vist WUWT a few times each day, while I visit RC a few times each month. The reason I visit WUWT is to get a laugh, while I visit RC to get educated. But as I said, that’s me. It’s probably different for a lot of people”.
There is therapy for this you know?
As someone pointed out Real Climate does quote peer reviewed research more frequently, but only to support political rather than scientific arguments.
Entertaining, informative, civil, inviting and engaging just for a start are qualities that put WUWT on my very short daily must visit list. I am greatly impressed by the superb content and the thoughtful and pertinent commentary it generates.
Enonym says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
I would be careful to take the number of visitors as a quality indicator. As for my self, I vist WUWT a few times each day, while I visit RC a few times each month. The reason I visit WUWT is to get a laugh, while I visit RC to get educated.
My visit frequency is similar, though my motivation is the inverse of yours.
When I sometimes think about the fundamental basis of a free society, it is not surprising that (recently) WUWT pleasantly comes to mind.
Everyone must read Real Climate to learn about the two main concepts of science, consensus and peer review. So far, I have read:
Consensus, Rolling Consensus, Evolving Consensus, Cumulative Consensus, I Am Consensus, We Are Consensus, No Consensus Without Hierarchical Authority, Consensus As The Ultimate End, Consensus Is For Lovers, and many others.
Peer Review, Capturing Peer Review In A Scientific Field, I Am Peer Review, We Are Peer Review, Spotting Dissent Among Peer Reviewers, Excommunicating Faithless Peer Reviewers, Selling Peer Review, Programmed Instruction For Peer Reviewers, Retraining For Critical Peer Reviewers, and many others.
bob says:
July 27, 2010 at 6:47 am
“How often does WUWT link to peer reviewed journal articles as compared to RC?
The answer to that question will tell you which site does the better job of educating its visitors.”
I’m going to have to assume you missed the e-mails from the CRU leak (CRUtape Letters) that discussed peer review, eh?
Well done, Anthony, Charles the Moderator, others. I came here to get questions answered, often by people who work in the fields in question… whether climate, weather, solar or sometimes space science. And I’ve commented on the less heavily technical aspects of the issues. At Real Climate I was told rudely not to ask inconvenient questions and never went back. Please keep up the good work.
Congratulations, Anthony, in advance of the 50 millionth web site hit. I hope everyone else who is appreciative of this search for truth; committment to investigative journalism; and open scientific debate with clear data, methods, and analysis subscribes. We subscribers will change the reality of “mass media”. ClimateAudit is a must subscribe, too. No JournoList-like hacks and propagandists for those interested in climate science. May they — and their academic fellow-travelers — deconstruct in the dustbin of history.
Enonym, it you like a web site that gives pretty much one side of the story, then RC is the place for you. Having personal experience, they filter and censor the opposition view points. If that’s the education you want, go for it, but as a retired R&D Director, I wouldn’t hire you with that education.
Congratulations to WUWT for their work.
P.S. I REALLY ENJOY those tutorial items you put in and the subsequent references. Having spent more then 40 yrs. in design, and math modeling of thermal systems, it’s fun to cross check you points. Having “crossed swords” with Tamino on his 300+ year East England analysis, his only response was “it’s botched”, but couldn’t seem to figure out why.
In a word,
1. Is it true that many US surfacestations are gathering temp data on rooftops, next to brick walls, in parking lots, and next to a/c units?
2. Why is the most drastic warming (9deg F!) happening in the Arctic and Antarctic, where no one lives and where Greenland doesn’t even have a temp station?
3. Why are climate scientists sending emails to eachother rigging the peer review process and giving scientists the runaround when they request raw data?
Congratulations on the construction and success of a “new parallel universe,” where these questions are so expertly framed and addressed. You just have to go to the eleventh demension, take a right at the wormhole, and gravity lense yourself over to WUWT to find out! Because it is, after all, a “new parallel universe.”*
*According to a former president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and a former author and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
—
At 6:47 AM on 27 July 2010, bob had written:
If nothing else was demonstrated in the Climategate revelations, significant among the e-mail abstracts was correspondence on the part of the “Cargo Cult Science” warmist cabal regarding their largely successful efforts to use editorial influence (sometimes bordering on extortion) and the co-option of peer review in the preponderance of the scientific periodicals to actively and with malice aforethought suppress the publication of properly skeptical scientific examination of the anthropogenic global warming fraud.
It is with a sense of contempt and mockery that we look upon the continuing effort on the part of the botched and gullible “global warming” True Believers to insist that the pervasively perverted peer review process – deliberately corrupted by the CRU correspondents and their sputniki – can any longer be afforded any credibility as a standard of validity when it comes to the AGW fraud.
Let it be understood that in the sciences as elsewhere, those who advance any proposition – in the sciences in particular – are obliged “to place before mankind the common sense of the matter in terms so plain and simple as to command their assent.”
To rely upon a demonstrably corruptible and highly fallible curia of so-called “experts” who have long operated under the profound influence of secondary gain (in the form of lucrative government grants steered their way by grasping and manipulative politicians and bureaucrats) is no longer acceptable, and will not be received except as a manifest of a deponent’s intention to deceive.
And therefore, bob, to hell with you.
—
I think idex was joking.
Enonym says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:14 am
while I visit RC a few times each month
=====================================
I wondered who that was
“Ric Werme says:
July 27, 2010 at 5:32 am (Edit)
Anyone have a solar cooker I can borrow tonight?
I always have trouble getting my solar cooker to work at night. Can’t think why…”
Ric–
You should do as the Germans do with their heavily subsidized solar panels– Train some floodlights on them at night.
I typically only go to ideologically closed-minded sites like RC when following a reference/link to them from more open idea sites like here.
John
WUWT is deservedly popular because of the quality and insightfulness of its posts, the interesting and even entertaining commentary by readers (especially the scientists and engineers), and the classy but personal way Anthony runs the site.
It helps to be on the correct side of the debate, too, as more and more are coming to realize.
Unhappily, the establishment media, from the NYT to the National Geographic, continue to beat the ‘global warming’ drum as if mankind’s culpability were a foregone conclusion and contrary views by real scientists did not exist. What’s it going to take to get this robotic chorus to sing a different tune?
/Mr Lynn
evanmjones says:
July 27, 2010 at 8:26 am
> I think idlex was joking.
So did I, but apparently not. I even thought it was a pretty good joke. Now it’s just a rank joke. 🙂
Tooth gnashing? You can’t gnash with only a tooth. You need teeth.
BTW, you know how everyone knows the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas?
Answer: If it had been invented anywhere else, we would call it a teethbrush.
The preacher was working up the Saturday Night crowd with an end of the world sermon.
“And there will be a great gnashing of the teeth…”
From the back,
“What if I ain’t got any teeth?”
He answers without missing a beat:
“Teeth will be provided.”
Perhaps some teeth should be sent over to the AGW crowd?