Blog news and traffic levels...

It's been roughly 19 months since I last put up a post about the Running in Cork blog and what kind of traffic levels it was getting.

Back in April 2010, the blog had just reached a new record for traffic with just over 20,000 hits for the month. Just 2 months later in June 2010, the site hit a new record of 27,232 hits for the month. After that, it stayed more or less steady until it took off again in the Spring of 2011 with a new peak of 44,625 reached in June. Needless to say, the peak in June was mainly due to the Cork City Marathon as the blog has a lot more information than the official website ;o)

In the Spring of this year, the blog was also been nominated and shortlisted for the best sports blog for the second time on the Irish Blog Awards. It's one thing to be nominated but it's nice that the judges considered it good enough to be shortlisted.

Since July 2011, the traffic has been growing steadily until it hit 33,751 in November 2011...the 2nd highest ever. Just to show how strong the growth has been, it was 'only' 18,500 twelve months earlier. Translating that into daily figures, it means that the site gets well over 1,000 hits every day. Comparing that to other local club websites, the blog gets as many hits in a few days as they would get in a month. In some cases, it just takes a few hours! ;o)

Someone asked me some time ago when I posted earlier figures if I had been using Google Analytics. I started to use it 2-3 years ago and the figures obtained from it closely match those shown up top.

On a national scale, it is now one of the main athletics and running websites in the country. So where is everyone coming from??? Obviously Cork as you would expect but suprisingly enough, the blog gets a lot of hits from Dublin! Some of that traffic might be explained by maybe some offices in Cork having their Internet traffic routed through a head office in Dublin but it's a lot more than that. As anyone who reads the blog on a regular basis will know, Running in Cork isn't all about running IN Cork ;o) As well as local races and news, there are a lot of other national and international news items as well.

Social Media.......As well as the blog, there are also associated Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Twitter feed allows people to keep track of any new posts. The Running in Cork Facebook page has approx 960 subscribers at present and is a good way for people to keep track of new posts or any additional info which might be posted there. Hopefully, I'll have details of a competition there soon ;o) If you use Facebook then consider subscribing. If you find a story of interest, click the Share button and post it to your wall.

Time and Money.....as usual, not enough of both :o)) Seriously though, the site does take a LOT of time to maintain. Some people have used the 'Donate' button on the right hand side of this page to make a contribution to the running costs of the blog and I thank them for that. I have 2 stores at the top of the page...Books and Watches....and if you are considering buying either or in fact anything from Amazon then have a look there. Brown envelopes are also welcome if you find it hard to break old habits ;o) .............only joking!!

They can be white as well.

What's next?.......Besides the usual fare, I hope to introduce some new material which might be aimed at beginners. Eventually, this might be useful as reference material and might attract a wider audience. I have a few other ideas in the pipeline as well which I may develop as time allows.

Running In Munster.......before I forget it, the Running in Munster site is humming away nicely as well. While it started back in 2008 as a kind of spillover from the Running in Cork site, I now use it to post race results from all over Munster with the exception of Cork. It gets about 6000-7000 hits per month.