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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Anthony, I don’t know if someone already mentioned it, but blogroll also impacts bounce rate. I go to your site first, generally read the new content, and then use your blogroll throughout my reading session. So, after I visit other sites, I hit my back button to go back to WUWT and then bounce to other sites.
“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.”
Interesting that there are very similar comments on the left regarding Obamacare. They believe that they are simply not communicating the benefits of the healthcare plan well. The left is all about repeating a message over and over until folks believe it, the truth or content is of no significance in their play book.
Top six for Time On Site are skeptical blogs.
===============
Wonder why ordinary folks are skeptical of CAGW? Take a look at any of the popular Mythbusters episodes, look at how they take a claim and try to disprove the claim. They have no idea what the results are going to be. Are the alarmists’ claims disprovable? Do the alarmists have a preconceived result or do they wait for the test to be made to see what the results are?
Moldbug has a detailed description of science vs Science.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22.html?m=1
Bounce rate also depends on the format of the site. WUWT has articles, and to read the articles you have to drill down. A site such as ClimateDepot sends you to another site. It’s trying to accomplish a different goal than WUWT, so its effectiveness is not measured by bounce rate. DrudgeReport has the same format, also sending you to a different site. It ranks an impressive 417, but has a poor bounce rate of 67.20%.
I’ve noticed a recent (annoying) tenacity at ClimateDepot to copy the article that they are touting to their site, perhaps to improve their bounce rate.
WUWT is almost always the first tab I have open on my computer.
When I go elsewhere I use a new tab (so WUWT is still open).
Does this cheat the “time on site” calculations ?
It is my plan 🙂
Yes, I feel bad about doing it.
Just curious but why isn’t Tom Nelson mentioned? I often start there and visit the most interestingly tagged sites, or all of them. Sometimes I bounce to WUWT numerous times daily when new articles are tagged.
REPLY: Tom has essentially stopped blogging – Anthony
About my previous post concerning ClimateDepot and DrudgeReport, they start java programs running on your browser which auto-refreshes the window, thus increasing their traffic. DrudgeReport is especial annoying about this, so much so that I can’t finish reviewing the featured articles without it refreshing. Hence, I only visit it when I can use a browser that has java disabled or I avoid it altogether. ClimateDepot only refreshes occasionally, and happily WUWT does not do auto-refreshing.
Nice presentation.
I have a tendency to bounce back here to WUWT.
This is certainly something worth shouting about Anthony! Alarmist Sites are just boringly stupid.
Whenever WUWT links to a graph on the NOAA website doesn’t that boost the bounce rate there? A high bounce rate could also indicate a site with useful resources that other sites link to.
I am more impressed by the rankings, indicating that people give more credibility to skeptic sites than alarmist ones. Then again, the poster (Watts himself) is a well-known skeptic–maybe it is just his bias.
I think the phenomena he is happy about here are real. I also think this is the world’s best climate website, with the world’s best commenters. It is one of the world’s best science websites.
The most important thing, though, is changing the mind of the public, especially today’s young people, who are doing economy- and biosphere-damaging things because they believe the alarmists.
The alarmists are studying how to effectively communicate their message (a bit tough with the facts against them). We should also study what communicates to undecided and alarmist people.
One thing that seems to help is following the money: the 1000 to one funding ratio because alarmists get their money from the government, which is biased because it hopes for a new tax. The “well-funded” Koch brothers stuff is a standing joke here. (I haven’t gotten mine, either).
There is a general public confusion between CO, carbon monoxide, highly poisonous in tiny doses because it has 1000 times the affinity for hemoglobin that oxygen has, and carbon dioxide, CO2, which is vital to life including animals and human beings.
And we need to promote the biological side of it more. That, after all, is the point of the whole fuss, and the facts there are even more strongly on our side that the temperature facts.
Not sure how much alarmist can gain anymore in blogging, it’s all the same old same old to me whenever I visit their sites. To me they are not very intellectual stimulating especially when you can see through the propaganda….it’s like listening to NPR or the BBC which I gave up on years ago. “I don’t need to be told what to think, give me the info and I will do the thinking….thank you very much”
It’s interesting to see how many people interact with web pages like I do. I bounce in and out of WUWT and GWPF many times a day to check what’s new. It’s kind of like brain candy I guess….
Tucci78 says:
March 15, 2014 at 12:50 pm
“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.” ”
WOW! Bolshe-wikipedia has an article on JournoList! Somebody call Jimbo; quality control failed!
I always have WUWT open in a tab here at home, and usually in a tab at work as well. While waiting on a program to compile I’ll look to see “watts up” in the world.
I wonder if Willis’ blog brawls with the readership offer a train wreck-like experience that people want to keep coming back to. Nobody doesn’t like a on-line train wreck.
But to really understand this stuff you have to look at the article churn. WUWT generally has several very topical posts per day and we regulars come to expect that, I think, based on commenter’s names showing up across articles. Moreover, many in the readership on blogs generally are also in the frequent and/or long-winded commenter realm and this, I think, works against Dr. Curry’s site where tit-for-tat bickering goes on for many hundreds of posts per article (tolerant moderators). That works to drive people away who don’t wish to follow the conversation, and discourages people from lingering. Axe me how I know. Add to that the relatively high technical content and up goes the bounce. Who has time to wade through all that crap?
The snark level of the authors here is quite high and the topics tend more toward red meat than other blogs (political vs science). That plus churn is a good mix if you’re going after web metrics. Doesn’t mean jack as to the value of the site regarding science, but it is something you can show the advertisers. That’s why Google makes the info available. That is not to say this is a science-free zone, there’s great science here, but we don’t see Lord Monckton, who delivers a salacious mix of science and politics, on many blogs. And BTW, where in the world is Topher?
Added a few to Anthony’s list. Lubos Motl’s blog is of interest, particularly for highlighting the Czechoslovakian former President Vaclav Kraus, one of the very few if not only European leaders with the education to know what he is talking about and the guts to call a spade a spade when it comes to climate change. (Also, one can get a guilty pleasure out of Motl’s own over-the-top nastiness.)
Site Proprietor Type Bounce Rate Rank* (lower is better)
desmogblog.com alarmist 78.6% 143,862
nofrakkingconsensus.com La Framboise skeptic 58.8% 266,413
motls.blogspot.com Motl skeptic 40.7% 420,480
hockeyschtick.blogspot.com Bolt? skeptic 54.1% 561,358
thepointman.wordpress.com skeptic 59.3% 627,382
watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com alarmist not reported 3,218,348
StevenGoddard.wordpress.com Goddard skeptic 52.0% 40,103
It’s a testament to the great product you present to your audience. You, your helpers & your contributors make WUWT at site you want explore & learn from.
Once again, THANK YOU to Anthony and everyone else that makes this site what it is.
Well, I get WUWT links in my RSS reader, and that’s where I click from. I usually don’t “interact” with the page, apart from scrolling, unless I leave a comment. But I click all the links to WUWT. So, I contribute to the bounce rate, but not because I find the site boring or uninformative, it’s just the way I get here. I click, which opens WUWT in a new tab, read, then close the tab, then click on the next story in my reader.
I did my own summary, and found 8 sceptic listings, with an average site time of 240.5 seconds (4 minutes). There are 12 alarmist sites, with an average site time of 138.17 seconds (2 minutes 18 sec.).
Speaks volumes.
It works!
Don’t forget that since browser tabs were invented, many people stay logged-in all the time (unless they are Windows users, because that OS requires a restart every 11.34 hours). One thing I like about WattsUpWithThat is no auto-refresh. Some sites set this to as low as 30 minutes, which artificially ups the page count (although bots can figure out the pattern).
Ok, this article led me to glance at climaterealityproject.org which links to realitydrop.org which is supposed to encourage people to rebut skeptical articles. It uses a “myth-what deniers say-what the science says” template (example http://realitydrop.org/#articles/111694). Skepticalscience.com uses the same template (example http://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm). A few years back I remember an article on nbc news that specifically pointed readers to Skepticalscience.com if they wanted to debate “deniers”. The alarmist side is much more pervasive, well-funded and politically-connected than the skeptic side, despite all the accusations of big oil funding for us skeptics….
Anthony, you have 40.90%. My website – skeptic – is reported as 40.70%. I won! 😉
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/motls.blogspot.com
“The key to getting readers to click thru to a story is a catchy headline and a succinct first paragraph.
The warm-mongers use this tactic all the time. Most people are too busy to read the whole article (witness TL;DR) so leave with the impression that the headline gives. Couple this with the “truth-putting-on-shoes” reality, there’s no wonder why propaganda methods are so effective.