A look at who has and who hasn’t gotten that kiss of death in climate communications
One of the more common woes mentioned by climate activists that suffer from bafflement over the tenacity of climate skepticism goes something like this: “if we could just communicate the urgency of climate change, everything would be better”. They think it’s just a matter of tweaking the message, rather than the message itself.
The other day, I wrote an article Another eco-journalist leaves Grist and noted the high bounce rate of the grist.org website, referencing a Mashable article that is the source of the phrase that is the headline. An article on Google Analytics says that:
If you could only choose one metric to look at, Bounce Rate might be your best choice.
I noted with interest the almost 2 to 1 disparity between the bounce rate at Grist and WUWT, and thought it worth exploring to see how bounce rate stacks up elsewhere in the climate blogo-media-sphere, thanks to a little inspiration from Josh. Some sites, like the Center for American Progress Climate Progress are served behind larger websites, so measuring their bounce rate isn’t possible. Below, in no particular order, is a table that lists many well known and some not so well known climate related websites and their bounce rate. The results are telling:
| Site | Proprietor | Type | Bounce Rate | Rank* |
| wattsupwiththat.com | Watts | skeptic | 40.90% | 9,345 |
| grist.org | varied | alarmist | 72.20% | 16,299 |
| skepticalscience.com | Cook | alarmist | 69.10% | 73,787 |
| realclimate.org | Schmidt | alarmist | 78.70% | 137,851 |
| climatedepot.com | Morano | skeptic | 67.80% | 47,880 |
| climaterealityproject.org | Gore | alarmist | 43.00% | 226,434 |
| bishop-hill.net | Montford | skeptic | 41.10% | 84,427 |
| climateaudit.org | McIntyre | skeptic | 63.20% | 76,583 |
| 350.org | McKibben | alarmist | 62.80% | 101,225 |
| thegwpf.org | Peiser | skeptic | 41.60% | 79,508 |
| planet3.org | Tobis | alarmist | 70.60% | 1,481,021 |
| rankexploits.com | Liljegren | lukewarmer | 53.70% | 238,563 |
| davidappell.blogspot.com | Appell | alarmist | 68.40% | 1,593,226 |
| ipcc.ch | U.N. | alarmist | 54.00% | 173,946 |
| globalwarming.org | C.E.I | skeptic | 59.50% | 916,180 |
| drroyspencer.com | Spencer | skeptic | 60.40% | 126,437 |
| joannenova.com.au | Nova | skeptic | 64.00% | 61,953 |
| theconversation.com | AU/UK gov | alarmist | 74.20% | 18,911 |
| climatecrocks.com | Sinclair | alarmist | 66.70% | 321,875 |
| principia-scientific.org | O’Sullivan | undefinable | 81.50% | 403,759 |
| forecastthefacts.org | Soros? | alarmist | 25.00% | 607,366 |
| judithcurry.com | Curry | lukewarmer | 57.60% | 85,517 |
| climate.gov | NOAA | alarmist | 83.70% | 140,025 |
All data above gathered as of 3/15/14 via Alexa.com, and each link is to the alexa.com results.
* Global Traffic Rank score, lower is better, for example Google is ranked as 1.
The most surprising thing to me was finding that NOAA’s climate.gov had a bounce rate of 83.70%, more than twice that of WUWT at 40.90%, and even higher than the “slayers” at principia-scientific. It’s pretty bad when a government website with a budget can’t outperform one of the wackiest climate related websites in existence in engaging their audience. Another surprising thing was that the oxymoronically named agenda driven attack website forecastthefacts had a bounce rate of only 25%. I think this is because there is so little information on their front page that anyone that gets sent there has to click on at least one link (such as about) to figure out who they are. their global ranking is even worse than the “principia/slayers”, suggesting that few are taking them seriously.
From the table, it seems that skeptical websites tend to be ranked generally as having more traffic and lower bounce rates than alarmist websites with some exceptions. Climateaudit tends to have a higher bounce rate due to its highly technical nature, and does Judy Curry’s shop.
According to an Inc.com article:
“As a rule of thumb, a 50 percent bounce rate is average. If you surpass 60 percent, you should be concerned. If you’re in excess of 80 percent, you’ve got a major problem.”
Clearly, a number global warming proponents and some skeptics aren’t very successful in getting their message across on the Internet, NOAA and “Slayers” in particular.
UPDATE: Some folks wanted to see the **daily time spent on each site in minute & seconds per day, so here is an updated table with that added: I had to make this table as an image since wordpress doesn’t play nice with table insertions wider than the available writing space. The highest and lowest values of daily time on site are highlighted.
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I think bounce rate is almost affected by regularly posting new content. WUWT constantly has new content where many of the other sites don’t. Tamino is a good example, Climate Audit too. If I go to a site and there’s no new content then I bounce.
Of course that’s not the only reason some of those sites have such a high bounce rate. I believe that WUWT regulars are much more engaged than most people.
Two points:
1. WUWT often requires one go to a new page in order to open the full item. If the full item were generally available on the top page, WUWT’s bounce rate would be higher.
2. I’m uncomfortable with making a mere unproved assertion of the significance of the bounce rate. It reminds me of unproved assertions made by warmists, such as the assertion that climate change causes cold spells.
REPLY: Nobody’s asking you to “prove” anything. It is just an interesting observation that I thought people might find interesting. Chill. – Anthony
I guess a website in decline, like RealClimate, naturally gets a high bouncerate. At least when I occasionally visit them, I see the long silent gaps in their posting (often two weeks between articles), lose interest, and “bounce off”. Whereas on WUWT, both the high number of postings and the subject matter almost always make me open an article and read it through.
I would think there are also those who go to a website primarily in order to read the comments, and at RC, where the censuring of unwanted opinions is strictly enforced, comments seem to be rather few.
Of course, being a sceptic, I’m more inclined to read articles here than on RC, but in general it must be boring also for neutral readers to see the same postings as a week before. Once bored, twice shy.
Alarmist presentation bounce rates can be elevated by being what everyone has heard many times before and hence boring.
Many other variables may apply, though, like I could investigate a guess of mine that probably WUWT’s average bounce rate went up temporarily at the same time it got effectively extra advertising and views from a Drudge Report link a while back. If so, that could be due to the number of new casual barely-interested-in-climate visitors linked in rising relative to the traditional audience.
While I couldn’t be more opposed to their goals and claims, frankly the CAGW movement’s skepticalscience.com (dishonest even in its very name) has way more relative influence than relative page rank or page views would superficially indicate. WUWT, daily updated, gets its core audience visiting ~ 100+ times a year. A very large pool of CAGW movement supporters visit skepticalscience.com , used by them in arguments all over the internet and indirectly offline. But most of those just visit when looking up something to copy, a handful of times a year or less amongst those merely once in a while getting in such an argument.
While a moderate number of skeptics, like myself, have a combo of knowledge and lack of naivety sufficient to handle and defeat the arguments on that site, their smooth dishonest refinement is rather effective against a lot of casuals. On sites and forums not directly related to climate, it is sad how often I’ve seen a skeptic effectively lose an argument due to such as being blindsided by a fudged-data graph from a CAGW movement supporter doing little more than copy pasting. Actually it is unfortunate there is no skeptic equivalent to them in organizational style including topic lists.
Somehow, I guess Steve McIntyre cares more for the issues than for bounce rates, a form of beauty contest.
@ur momisugly Jones:
“Ahh…Just a thought but what about people like me who might look in on WUWT many times in a day (honest) but when see nothing new just just click right back out again……Apologies but that would serve to adversely bias the count?”
That’s a point. Often go to WUWT several times a day myself, longing for a good climate story, although I know one can’t expect Mr. Watts to produce stuff continuously, at least not when night embraces America! So, yes, it is a bit of an addiction. Quite a nice one, as addictions go.
EDIT:
Also something to look into could be how good various data sources are at distinguishing unique versus non-unique visitors, regarding repeat viewers. For example, my browser is set to auto-clear regular cookies every time it closes; it usually doesn’t take flash cookies; and my IP address varies too. Some web traffic monitors (including probably Alexa if I recall correctly) get some volunteers to download and install a toolbar, which might provide a more solid unique indicator, though that raises some questions of its own on how much or not like a random sample.
REPLY: you are really good at suggesting things that could/should be done by others in your comments. Doing those things yourself, not so much. – Anthony
Bob says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:18 am
“As far as climate science is concerned, after you read WUWT, Climate Audit, Bishop Hill, JoNova, and Climate Etc, you pretty well have the subject of climate science and news covered.”
+ Lucia’s Blackboard.
Reading further in the Wikipedia article …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_rate
As readers here know, it is impossible to define or completely describe a complex system using a single metric such as global mean temperature or bounce rate.
For clarification is TOS in minutes and seconds/eday or hours and minutes/day? I see no notation regarding units expressed.
I often load the front page or a particularly interesting topic page that I have commented on, and leave it up for hours and periodically come back and do a page reload with no mouse clicks on the page. How does that register as one very long visit or multiple short visits.
Constantly monitoring a topic page indicates high involvement in the topic even though the user makes no additional clicks on the page. On fast moving topics I might reload the page every couple minutes and the only interaction with the page is using the up down arrows or scroll bar to follow new posts on the topic.
REPLY: all that stuff is at the Alexa links I provided in the first table. Do I have to do everything? Minutes/seconds/day for you lazy bones. – Anthony
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22bounce+rate%22
“They think it’s just a matter of tweaking the message, rather than the message itself.”
— I don’t even think it’s the message. It’s everything in how they approach the topic. Those with skeptical views are rudely dismissed as wackjobs or shills, or worse. The common stated objections are not addressed, and people notice that. We’re supposed to accept their statements based on their scientific authority, and not question it. Just open up the checkbook.
I’ve sat through a lot of Board of Directors meetings and have seen and made many presentations. Anybody who wants to get funded has to present a coherent argument. A blanket, “I’m the expert, so just write the check dummy” is not going to cut it.
I apologize for adding to your ‘bounce rate’ by visiting WUWT several times a day to look for any new postings.
REPLY: No apologies needed. – Anthony
And, showing my age, “Kiss of Death” in the title reminded me of Shirley Bassey singing the theme song to “Goldfinger”.
I have to wonder what the bounce rate is going to be when abjectly leftard Ezra “a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList”>JournoList” Klein gets his Vox.com site up and running as “a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission is simple: Explain the news.”
From a “Liberal” fascist, perspective, of course. Anybody want to guess what the toxic Voxic slant’s gonna be with regard to the “news” about the anthropogenic climate change fraud?
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/031514.jpg
Yes when it comes to good practice for data presentation, you always include explicit statements (ie in your foot note definining TOS) within a chart of units and a key for chart colors used so it stands alone.
Both bounce rate and time on site will be pretty strongly correlated with frequency of new content. For example, if RealClimate only has one post per month folks will visit every few days and quickly “bounce” when there is nothing new.
Whether the bounce rate is a good metrics or not, one should not try to ‘game’ the system by designing the web-site to improve the metric. Just provide the good contents and discussion as always.
What about RSS feeds? When they update, does that get counted as a “bounce” or is the function excluded from the stats?
I don’t need to check if there is something new on my favourite sites, RSS does it for me.
+1000!!!
I designed an academic library site with the idea that the landing page would have all the information someone would need to fill their information needs. Almost all of the links were to external data providers, with very few going to policy pages on my own server. My bounce rates in Google Analytics were atrocious, but my total visits went through the roof, so I was quite happy with it. As with anything, the visitor data has to be analyzed with the purpose of the site in mind.
Commercial sites are very interested in keeping people clicking. It gives more opportunities to provide advertising that might hook a sale.
One thing I know from my own internet usage is that I go to more than one page within a site I use often, whereas those I’m guided to from Google searches often aren’t what I’m looking for so I go back to the search and try again.
I suspect that there’s a reasonably good correlation between return visitors and low bounce rates, so you might like to see if you can analyse what percentage of your visitors are return visitors and whether the bounce rate is lowest amongst your most loyal readers. I know that 80% or more of the times I come to the site I either read a story or go to a data page like the sea ice page. I do this at other sites I visit often also.
The key to getting readers to click thru to a story is a catchy headline and a succinct first paragraph. The headline makes you read the first paragraph and that makes you decide whether to click thru to the main article.
Bob says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:18 am
“As far as climate science is concerned, after you read WUWT, Climate Audit, Bishop Hill, JoNova, and Climate Etc, you pretty well have the subject of climate science and news covered.”
+ Lucia’s Blackboard.
—————————————-
Agreed. I also enjoy Pierre Gosselin’s NoTricksZone. Pierre writes well and the site is great for news on energy policy especially from Germany. Germany is way “ahead” of other nations in renewables but clearly not an example to follow.
Heartland or the Bros. Koch should fund Lucy in the Sky and other gals of contrarianism in putting together a point/counterpoint rebuttal of SkS’s stuff, and other alarmist claims, in varying levels of detail depending on drill-down. That this desperately needed and obvious step hasn’t been done is one of the main indications that our side isn’t well-organized or well-funded.
Left out, the evident No.2 most effective skeptical blog, especially since his material feeds into ClimateDepot.com and then gets major media attention along with Drudge Report and conservative blogs.
StevenGoddard.wordpress.com
Bounce rate 52.02%
Ranking 40,103
Time on site: 8:03