h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks, Gnomon.

That's too bad.


Wouldn't it be great to have a before and after shot?

"Last year I made a new years resolution to only eat organic, free range or ethically farmed meat, and I stuck to it.
Next year I think I'd like to get some sleep."

i thought you said "Next year I think I'd like to get some sheep."



btw i did the same thing and its tough sometimes when you can smell cooking meat
that isnt organic, free range or ethically farmed... but its worth it!! and healthier too!!

>>but its worth it!! and healthier too!!<<

Being of a Scientific bent, I've never understood this statement.

Chemicals were partially introduced to make food safer, by killing off bacteria etc, notably tapeworm in pork and nematodes etc. By not doing so, contaminated food killed people.
This was before domestic cooking and storage products improved to the extent that now organic food could be eaten safely. It has also made the requirements of Halal and Kosher to also be largely obsolete too.

Nowadays going organic is not as clear cut as many 'green' gurus make out, as certain chemicals are permitted:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8415576.stm

But that is me being back on my .

Apolgies for stepping on

MMF

A before-and-after shot would be interesting to me in a casual way, but not that much. Most of the content people are searching for and reading is still content that was created during the BBC years, as that is still what probably 90% of the site consists of. That being the case all it would illustrate is various changes in search engine optimisation techniques.

I don't think enough time has passed since the interregnum for there to have been any drastic changes on that front, to be honest.

"I don't think enough time has passed since the interregnum for there to have been any drastic changes on that front, to be honest"


I agree, KB, but that was only a little bit of my point. My main wondering is about the really big numbers in the announcement. Without context or comparison, they're really big numbers without much actual meaning.

I have absolutely no idea what "good" page view numbers would be (although hootoo's do sound very good, given my ignorance).

I'll not belabour it.

Well, I guess it's a case of "how long is a piece of string?"

It goes from blogs which have no hits in the average month apart from visits by the blog owner, to Google, which presumably has billions upon billions.

Pastey and MMF here is a natural food thread i just started so we can get this off topic topic outa here http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/F19585?thread=8288189&latest=1

>> I'll not belabour it. <<

Ok then , I will.


I can't get my head around concepts like millions.
Especially since various articles are said to have
had views of just over a thousand.

What else were the millions reading?

Surely they weren't just lurking around ASK and
watching the feces fling wars?


~jwf~

Making the numbers of readers we've had since leaving the BBC is good in two ways, it shows that we're still being read now we've left, and it shows our writers that it's worth putting things into the Guide.

Beforehand, there was never any feedback at all, so we'd no way of knowing which if any, of our Entries were being searched for. I am of the opinion that being more open about our readership will be encouragement for people to contribute.

~jwf~ we have people reading all sorts of things, far too many to list - and the things most popular in one week will vary to the next. For instance, sherry trifle was extremely popular, but I think that will tail off now Christmas is behind us.

"I am of the opinion that being more open about our readership will be encouragement for people to contribute."




I agree.

I think KB has a valid point about Google hits.
But one wonders how that works.

If Google spiders pick up a few key words in an
h2g2 entry or thread and the URL gets listed with
thousands of others in search results, does that
count as a proper h2g2 page view?

Not trying to be a wet blanket here, folks, just
trying to get some realistic perspective on these
new numbers.

If we are supposedly getting millions of hits and
we can see that a few thousand read one entry and
a few thousand read another, then where are the
other 990,000?

I understand Lanzababy's reply. Yes it would not be
possible to list all the hits... Unless... could we
put a visible hit counter on every page?
Is that possible?

Obviously not if each had to be installed manually,
but I wonder if counters could be set to self-install
when a page was visited that didn't already have one.


~jwf~

Just found this: http://stuffgate.com/h2g2.com


That gives me an idea of what I was wondering.

ooo i want one

(a counter for my PS)

As Lanza says, we don't have the BBC figures; it is possible the *BBC* didn't have the BBC figures, what with us being tucked away after so many slashes /dna/h2g2/ and only having two members of staff, and all.

The figures went up steadily through October and November; I don't know what Christmas did to them.

B

I was pleased to see (at the link in my previous post) that hootoo's traffic is comparing favourably with some University websites. University websites have a captive audience, after all.

>>> If we are supposedly getting millions of hits and we can see that a few thousand read one entry and a few thousand read another, then where are the other 990,000?

They're reading other h2g2 entries. h2g2 is a big place full of wonderful entries of all types, including this one about Hogmanay that completely escaped my notice because it didn't start to jump up in the statistics until after Christmas:

A10358165 Hogmanay - the Scottish New Year

Now it has 1,173 unique pages views and not spiders either. The average time spent on the page is a hair under 5 minutes, which is to say, people are arriving to h2g2 to *read* about Hogmanay.

And there's also all the forums. I'm sure Ask h2g2 gets a large fraction of the total hits.