We at DBR are very happy with our traffic, and we believe
your visits make us the most trafficked (individual) fan run site on the web.
Of course, there is no way to prove the absolute nature of our claim, except to compare our
traffic to what we see on hit counters on other sites we visit, but either way,
we think we do pretty well.
We recall recently hearing GoHeels.com described as "the most trafficked college site" on the web. We can't remember if this was from a VilCom source or somewhere else.
Good for them. With their corporate marketing, they have been able to drive "an average of more than
three million page views per month," and that ain't chicken feed.
While we are happy for them and for their success, we beg to differ on the claim of "most trafficked." Their number is too vague.
We can provide some specific numbers: In the month of November, you came to our site for 5,375,575 hits and 3,822,047 page views. Although we expect this to have a slight dip over the Christmas holidays, prior to that we have been on a pace to break 4,000,000 page views in December.
Not bad, especially when you realize it's all accidental traffic. It's not like
we had a plan or anything. Seriously, we've just been winging it and having fun.
That's the way it should be!
We don't view this as a contest between sites where we "have to win."
The more people visit our sites, the more we all win, which is one reason why we
like to link to a lot of different places, even ones we don't necessarily like. In the broad sense, it is a network,
and the more connections the better. We have been critical of VilCom, and
of some writers, but that doesn't mean we don't read them. We appreciate their
contributions to the ACC web presence. When we started DBR, there was almost
nothing about Duke or the ACC online, (which was one reason why we started it), and now that there is a lot available, we're thrilled, even when we don't necessarily like everything we read. It beats hell out of the early days when there was nothing more than AP
stories around, and nothing at all in the summer. Blech. Believe us, that
was hard work, making the summers interesting back then!
It's also worth
mentioning this: the Durham-Herald Sun could have easily built this
traffic. They might think it's not worth their while, but in ten years,
when audio and video are incorporated, and deals have been struck left and
right, they will not have the infrastructure, nor the experience, to catch up,
and the deals they'll be able to strike will not be as much to their
advantage. It's a pity, really.
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