Halfie’s progress on UKWRS

Another month has passed since I produced the last statistics from Tony Blew’s wonderful UK Waterways Ranking Site.

During the month we met Halfie at the Crick Boat show and he has been kind enough to blog about our graphs and leave a comment on our blog.

It’s our turn to return the favour and show how well Halfie has been doing on the ranking site since I started collecting data seven months ago.  Leave me a comment if you would like to be featured in a future month.

Posted on Wednesday, 9 June 2010 at 17:44        Comments (3)
Category(s): UKWRS

Bouncing Beginners

Tony Blews’ wonderful UK Waterways Ranking site provides lots of fun watching sites wander up and down the tables.

I’ve been logging movements to see what happens  and there have been many newcomers to the rankings.

Two of those show typical scores for the first few months.  There’s usually an initial peak when you add the code to the pages and you have to visit a few to make sure it works.

Then you have to get a few friends to try it too.  And you may be spotted on the rankings by a few others who also visit.  Then it gradually drops back to a normal level.

The Hollinwood Canal Society had a great start, probably visited by their members, before dropping back to a steady level.

Baddie the Pirate did very well and was just starting to drop back when, there were two peaks which I guess were caused by mentions on other web sites – perhaps Baddie knows where.

I have records for all the sites since November 2009 so let me know if you’d like to be shown.

Posted on Monday, 10 May 2010 at 21:23        Comments (1)
Category(s): UKWRS

Going up in the Spring

A little over 12 months ago, Tony Blews created the wonderful UK Waterways Ranking Site (UKWRS) and it’s Tony’s hard work that has created the source data for this blog.  Tony has kindly granted me permission to use the data.  Thank you.

Last month I showed how the scores varied for the top 15 sites in the ranking and this month its time to look at the next 15 sites, those in positions 16 to 30 (at the time I captured the data)

The first graph shows all fifteen sites mixed up and its rather hard to see which is which.  The next three graphs separate them into groups of five.

Graph 2 shows Google Earth Canal Maps, Water Explorer, Narrowboat Bones, WB Takey Tezey and NB Luck Duck which all seem to have been increasing over the last few months.

Graph 3 shows the ups and downs of Canal Photos, Chertsey, Derwent6, Baddie the Pirate and Narrowboat Caxton.

Graph 4 shows the generally increasing scores for Working Boat Hadar, Zulu Warrior, Captain Ahab’s Watery Tales, Contented Souls and NB Piston Broke.

Finally, the last graph shows Debdale.  Adam left a comment on the previous post about the variability of his scores and here’s a personalised graph to show just that.

I have data for all sites since 8 November 2009, so leave me a comment if you’d like to be featured.

Posted on Thursday, 8 April 2010 at 19:01        Comments (0)
Category(s): UKWRS

The ups and downs of life

A little over 12 months ago, Tony Blews created the wonderful UK Waterways Ranking Site (UKWRS) and it’s Tony’s hard work that has created the source data for this blog.  Tony has kindly granted me permission to use the data.  Thank you.

Any web site related to UK waterways can sign up and the visits to the web site are counted and the scores can be seen on the UKWRS site and the ranking displayed in a logo on the individual site.

You can see our own logo and ranking below the main menu on the left (above the comments).

I started logging the scores each day when I thought I might have a problem with my own web site towards the end of last year.

My own webstats were falling day after day and I couldn’t tell if I had a problem with my website and, perhaps, my ISP or if that was the normal seasonal fall towards the end of the year when there are less visitors.

Logging the scores from other websites soon put my mind at ease when I realised that my fall in scores was no different to all the other great sites which were falling in a similar way.

Graph 1 shows the top 15 sites and their scores on the UKWRS site for the last four months.  I’ve split these into groups of five to make them easier to see in the next three graphs.

Graph 2 shows the top 5 sites where their movements can be seen a little easier.

Jim Shead and Pennine Waterways (the blue and green lines) have a very similar shape, falling to a minimum around Christmas.  The Just Canals Forum had a great peak during the snow in January – perhaps a lot of people were "working at home" during the snow.

Graph 3 shows the sites ranked 6-10 and shows the time when Sue on No Problem seems to have had difficulties with changing web addresses (and I think there’s another change to come yet).

Graph 4 includes our own Waterway Routes score, which seems to go up and down more than some others.  I think this is because our visitors often browse a lot of pages and a few extra (or a few less) visitors can make a big difference to the score.

Look at Alacrity’s score shooting up.  I wonder what caused that and if it can be sustained.

Graph 5 shows UKWRS own scores.  It may not be the highest scoring but it’s one of my favourites.  It’s great for a little friendly rivalry.  I hope nobody is taking this too seriously.

My records cover all sites on the UKWRS site since 8 November 2009 and I plan to keep recording them.  There’s lots of different ways to present the statistics and I hope to produce occasional blogs like this to show the information.  If you have any ideas, or requests so see your own statistics then please leave me a comment.

Posted on Sunday, 7 March 2010 at 11:42        Comments (2)
Category(s): UKWRS