Posted on Mar 12, 2008

Referer Stats for ObsoleteSkills.com

Obsolete Skills Referrers

In the month-and-a-half since I started the wiki at ObsoleteSkills.com (thanks again for the idea, Scoble), it has been linked to from a whole bunch of blogs and websites, generating almost 3 million visits. Big name sites including BoingBoing, Slashdot, and Daring Fireball have all given me the privilege of a link. What really surprises me, though, is the percentage of traffic generated from each of these sources.

Above is a graph compiled from the top referrers to ObsoleteSkills.com. Looking at this graph reveals a few surprises: most notably that the majority of visits didn’t actually have a referrer, meaning people are just typing the domain into their browsers or using bookmarks, etc. This would imply that a lot of the traffic is from returning users, which is great.

Slashdot and StumbleUpon were, predictably, the next biggest referrers. I was surprised to see how little of the traffic came from David Pogue’s blog, which would seem to be a fairly high-traffic blog, and from BoingBoing, which is one of the most popular blogs around. It is also worth noting that Daring Fireball only linked to the site two days ago, so this won’t be representative of the actual percentage of referrers it might send.

Just so that there is a bit of scale to the graph, the lowest referrer to ObsoleteSkills.com shown on the graph (Gamespy Humor) represents a little over 32,000 visits, and there are obviously a bunch more referrers not showing on the graph.

Note: I’ve mixed the spelling of referrer on purpose, see Wikipedia for details.

  • Stumbleupon is specifically about "Hey, look at this!" so it'll generate click-throughs. Slashdot has the rabid geeks who'll compete to post obscure tech from their teen years. Together they create lotsa traffic.

    BoingBoing is widely read, but covers a huge range of interests. They tell much of the story in their post. Less likely to generate click-throughs because only a proportion are interested in that specific story, and only a proportion of those want any more than what's in the summary.

    David Pogue's blog is attached to a major MSM outlet. Plenty of traffic, perhaps, but a demographic that's more passive in its media consumption. I've certainly noticed that TechCrunch delivers more traffic than, say, a mention by a News Corp blogger.
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