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Site Statistics

Chris Ryan [21030691] <chris@rhodeschroma.com>

I have an almost complete set of log files for the Chroma site from January 1, 2000 to present (there are a few days missing here and there for various reasons); in 1999 I only had counters on the site. To put together the following statistics, I used Sawmill for analysis of log files from 2000 to 2006, and Google Analytics, which I added to the site in mid-2006, for 2007 and beyond.

This page doesn't get a lot of visits—only 18 unique views in 2010—so I have been slow to update it in recent years. I'm working on it, slowly.

Content

As of January 10, 2010.

Statistic #
Web pages* 359
Word count (HTML only) 1,137,197
ChromaTalk posts 4,354
Number of files comprising the site 2,327
Total file size (megabytes) 391

*This number includes four hidden pages, three of which are accessible to those who have donated to the site. It also includes the ChromaTalk List Tools page, which shares the site design but is hosted on informationaddiction.com where the mailing list lives.

Visitors

The number of visitors to the site increased by almost a factor of five from 2000 to 2006, and since then has, apparently, declined. One possible explanation for the sudden difference in numbers is that I switched from log file analysis to Google Analytics; the latter may treat the numbers differently. However, Google Analytics is so much less work that, though I continue to save the log files, the amount of work to do analysis on them is prohibitive.

Year Visitors Page Views
2000 7,852 30,276
2001 11,419 57,744
2002 19,310 78,923
2003 26,791 135,239
2004 30,801 183,048
2005 30,884 197,079
2006* 38,393 ?
2007 30,373 116,196
2008 25,842 107,074
2009 24,302 107,104
2010 22,496 100,310

*I have to go back and check page views for 2006.

The following chart shows the number of monthly site visitors from 2000.01.01 to 2008.12.31.

The stagnation and decline in visits during 2004 may be due to the lack of updates; I was devoting my time to developing the new site. Visits did not increase from 2004 to 2005, almost certainly because of the move from redrooffs.com/chroma to rhodeschroma.com in January 2005. It took some time for the new site's search results ranking to increase, and some months for people to change links to the new domain (there are still links I am trying to have changed, and in a Google search for "rhodes chroma" the old site is still on the first results page, as of early 2009).

Visitor Countries

From Anchorage to Auckland, Santiago to Qikiqtarjuaq, Tromsø to Lagos, the Chroma site has seen visitors from north and south, east and west, far and wide. The following table shows information on the percentage of visitors to the site coming from countries representing at least 1% of visitors in at least one of the years, from mid-2006, when I started using Google Analytics, through the end of 2010.

  2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
United States 40.1 39.3 40.5 38.6 33.3
Germany 4.5 5.7 6.1 7.3 8.0
United Kingdom 8.7 7.7 7.4 7.3 6.8
Italy 4.8 4.2 4.9 4.5 5.6
Canada1 7.7 7.0 5.6 5.8 5.0
France 2.8 2.8 3.2 3.4 4.5
Netherlands 4.2 3.3 3.6 3.3 3.1
Finland 1.3 1.6 0.9 0.9 2.9
Russia 0.6 0.6 0.7 1.0 2.5
Australia 1.9 1.7 2.0 1.9 2.4
Sweden 2.1 2.7 2.7 2.1 2.0
Japan 2.2 2.0 2.1 1.8 2.0
India 0.8 1.1 1.2 1.5 1.8
Spain 1.0 1.1 1.0 1.3 1.2
Ireland 0.3 0.7 1.1 1.6 0.8
Spain 1.0 1.1 1.0 1.3 1.2
Belgium 1.3 1.6 1.1 1.0 1.1
Greece 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.4 1.1
Switzerland 0.8 0.8 1.0 0.8 0.9
Poland 0.8 1.0 0.8 0.8 0.9
Brazil 0.9 0.8 1.0 0.9 0.8

1The site is created and hosted in Canada; however, no hits come from me as I work and browse from a local copy.

Browsers

Safari and Firefox came out of nowhere to reduce dramatically Internet Explorer's once-commanding share. At least on this site, IE has not been used by a majority of visitors since some time in 2006, and by 2008 it was ahead of Firefox by only the smallest of margins. (It's important to note, though, that Firefox has not added as much to the Mozilla browser family's share as may initially appear: Netscape has plummeted from 31% to 0.3% in these nine years; and Mozilla itself has been stagnant, and is now discontinued.)

Most of these browsers are cross-platform (except Chrome, coming for Mac OS X and Linux in 2009; Camino, Mac OS X only; and Konqueror, for Linux). I have split out the numbers for Internet Explorer, since it has been the most popular browser and its (long-discontinued) Mac version actually used a completely different rendering engine (unlike Firefox, which is the same engine cross platform). I have also detailed the OS split for Firefox, as it is the only other cross-platform browser with significant current market share; and Safari, as its WebKit engine is becoming a force, not only emerging on mobile devices (iPhone and iPod touch) but also in Chrome.

  2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Internet Explorer 55.6 64.5 76.2 73.9 73.8 63.3 54.9 49.3 40.1
Windows 50.2 57.7 70.1 70.4 70.3 59.6 53.5 48.9 40.0
Mac1 5.4 6.8 6.1 3.5 3.5 3.7 1.4 0.4 0.1
Firefox - - - - 2.8 15.8 20.3 31.9 39.5
Windows         2.5 13.5 16.3 25.1 28.3
Mac OS X         0.1 1.7 3.1 5.6 9.8
Linux         0.1 0.6 0.8 1.1 2.3
Safari - - - 2.1 6.1 10.7 11.4 13.5 13.7
Mac OS X       2.1 6.1 10.7 11.4 13.5 13.3
iPhone/iPod touch                 0.3
Windows                 0.2
Opera 0.1 0.5 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.2 1.7 2.4 2.4
Mozilla - 0.1 0.7 1.8 2.9 2.1 1.2 1.7 2.4
Chrome - - - - - - - - 0.7
Netscape Navigator 31.0 16.3 10.0 8.3 7.1 3.4 3.0 0.6 0.3
Camino - - - - - - - 0.2 0.3
Konqueror2 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2
America Online 5.9 5.0 5.9 2.2 1.6 1.1 0.7 - -

1Internet Explorer for Mac (discontinued as of 2003) runs on "classic" Mac OS as well as Mac OS X. These numbers are, through 2006, estimates based on adding numbers for non-Windows version numbers (i.e., 5.1 through 5.23) for 2003-2006; and counting "unknown" OS hits for IE as Mac previous to 2003.

2There were 41 hits from Konqueror in 2000, and 146 hits in 2002, neither of which amounted to 0.1% of the total.

Platforms

The browser data above provides a bit of a picture of operating systems used by site visitors. However, Sawmill seemed to identify many Mac OS visitors as "unknown" (for instance, those using Internet Explorer 5.2 which only existed on the Mac), whereas Google Analytics appears to be more accurate. Unfortunately, I only have Google Analytics data from mid-2006 to present. Hopefully I will be able to work out the flaw in Sawmill and present accurate historical data, but here is the picture for 2006 through 2011 (partial year, through September) for platforms with at least 1% of the total for at least one of the years.

  2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Windows 79.7 76.8 71.7 70.7 62.8 61.4
Macintosh1 18.7 20.2 23.8 25.5 31.3 31.0
Linux 1.4 2.6 3.9 2.9 3.7 3.4
iPhone/iPod touch2 - 0.0 0.3 0.6 1.2 1.6
iPad - - - - 0.4 1.6

1Includes both Mac OS X (on Intel and PowerPC) and any remaining "classic Mac OS" users (to version 9.x).

2There were 7 iPhone visits in 2007, or about 0.02%.

Search Engines

Yahoo declines, MSN surges around 2002 then recedes, and AltaVista all but disappears, while Google solidifies and maintains its dominance. (These numbers include only search engines which accounted for at least 1% of search engine referrals in at least one year; "0.0" indicates that hits were received but did not amount to one tenth of one percent of the total.)

  2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Google 36.8 52.3 63.2 73.4 80.2 86.8 84.4 88.2 87.2
Yahoo 23.1 17.9 14.1 13.5 11.8 6.9 9.6 7.6 9.6
MSN Search 5.1 9.0 11.3 8.5 4.7 5.2 4.9 1.8 0.6
AltaVista 15.1 8.1 4.2 1.8 1.5 0.4 0.6 0.4 0.5
AOL Search 1.8 2.0 3.5 1.3 1.0 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.5
Netscape Search 1.4 1.2 0.1 - - - - 0.0 0.1
Lycos 3.6 1.6 0.8 0.2 0.1 - 0.0 - 0.0
AlltheWeb 2.7 - - 0.0 0.0 - - 0.2 0.0
HotBot 1.4 1.4 0.1 0.4 0.1 0.0 0.0 - -
Dogpile 1.8 1.3 0.8 0.2 - - - - -
Northern Light1 1.6 1.1 0.0 0.0 - - - - -
Excite 0.9 1.1 - - - - - - -
Goto2 1.2 0.7 - - - - - - -

1Northern Light now "provides search and content integration technology and solutions for enterprises and individuals."

2Goto is now a US yellow pages search engine.

As of January 2009, this site was the number one result for a search on "rhodes chroma" for all of the above search engines—except Excite, for which it is fourth, after Google Chrome (apparently assuming a typo), Quality Optical Filters (weird), and EEFX Custom Chroma Key FX. Perhaps such wacky results demonstrates why Excite is not a particularly popular search engine!

Top Pages

This table shows the pages that have ranked in the top ten in terms of page views at least once since 2000.

Page 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Home 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Polaris           2 2 2 2
Rise & Fall of ARP 8 6 5 7 4 4 5 3 3
Registry: Model 21031           5 3 4 4
Music           6 6 6 5
Technical           8 7 8 6
Schematics & Drawings           ? ? 11 7
History 4 3 10 9 6 3 4 7 8
Analog Bach           ? ? 5 9
Documentation 23 8 6 13 13 11 10 13 10
Vintage Synthesizers 5 9 12 15 7 7 19 14 12
Synthesizer von Gestern     ~100 14 9 14 11 9 14
Reviews           9 12 17 15
Magazine Ads     15 8 5 20 8 12 17
Patches2 8 ~100 -     12 9 19 18
Registry: Polaris           ? 15 10 25
Patch Downloads 9 11 23 37 29 28 28 24 26
Dodds/Williams Interview     7 11 16 22 31 29 30
Classified Ads 7 5 9 16 10 21 25 25 36
Manuals           10 24 27 39
Pressure Sensor & Interface     24 2 13 33 30 39 43
ChromaKnob   21 18 3 33 23 20 53 47
Instrument Registry1 12 10 3 4 2 30 32 50 48
Keyboard Velocity Curves   ~45 ~60 6 57 ~85 ~90 83 67
Syntech Manual 6 12 22 21 21 50 50 55 85
FAQ 10 28 39 48 49 61 56 97 104
Downloads3   7 2 5 3        
Links4 2 2 4 10 8        
Articles5   4 8 12 11        
Software6 10 24 43 18 40        
Info7 3                

1Until 2005, a single registry page listed all entries across model numbers; now it is an introductory page and there are separate pages for each of the models (2101, 2102, 2103, 2104, and a new page for the Polaris, models 2121/2123).

2The Patches page was used as an introductory page in 2000 and resurrected in 2005; in the interim, the Downloads page pointed to the Patch Downloads page.

3Downloads were integrated throughout the site as of 2005.

4Links were integrated throughout the site as of 2005.

5The Articles section was eliminated in 2005; its contents were moved mostly to Reviews and Technical.

6The Software page was split and expanded into platform-specific pages or sections (Mac OS X, Mac OS, Windows, MS-DOS, Apple II, and Atari) for version 3 of the site in 2005.

7"Info for Owners" was an early page on the site that was expanded into sections for Support, Documentation, Downloads, and the ChromaTalk mailing list.

The success of the Polaris page — ranked #2 only after the home page since its inception — surprised me. I don't own a Polaris and don't know how many were produced in comparison to the original Chroma. I have to wonder if there is more interest in this instrument than I had assumed. In informal analysis, I noticed that "polaris schematics" seems to have been a popular search term, and it has occurred to me that some might have been looking for the pool, the snowmobile, or the ballistic missile of the same name. This is impossible to know; it is the shortcoming of Web analytics, which only answers the questions of what occurs, not why.

Top Referring Sites

This table shows each site that has ranked in the top ten non-search referrers at least once since 2000. I have omitted sites that "deep link" to a graphic or sound file, along with the site where where ChromaTalk is hosted.

Site; main referring pages 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
wikipedia.org (a, b, c, etc.) - - - - 14 9 3 1 1
fenderrhodes.com (a) 5 5 7 1 1 3 1 2 2
matrixsynth (posts) - - - - - 10 6 3 3
arpodyssey.com (a) - 6 3 3 6 5 7 5 4
synthzone.com (a, b) 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 4 5
till.com (a) 3 2 2 4 3 4 5 6 6
vintagesynth.com (a, b) - 4 4 5 5 7 4 8 7
ebay.com ~250 ~120 10 8 10 6 12 9 8
retrosound.de (a) ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 13 9
craigslist.org - - - - - 20 11 10 10
myspace.com/analogbach - - - - - - - 7 11
redrooffs.com1           2 9 11 13
wayoutware.com (a) - - - - 9 12 10 16 17
sonicstate.com (a, b) 4 3 6 9 7 22 19 14 20
hotrodmotm.com (a) -   11 10 13 28 20 30 27
harmony-central.com2 - - - ~100 - 8 8 28 35
syntronics.us3 ~100 10 15 22 26 - - ~70 ~80
kentonuk.com (a) 7 8 12 12 18 ~100 33 ~150 ~90
a2central.com (a) - - - 11 22 30 47 ~240 ~100
synrise.de4 (a) 8   19 24 ~100 - - - ~110
andrews.edu5 -   8 7 8 11 16 35 >300
binkie.net (a) 6 7 5 6 6 27 21 40 -
bluesynths.com - - - - 11 10 - - -
keyboards.de 9 ~60 ~100 - ~90 - - - -
analoguesamples.com6 - 9 9 - - - - - -
sirius.com7 2                
rhodes.freeservers.com8 10                

1redrooffs.com/chroma was the home of the Chroma site from 2000 to early 2005; there are still a number of links that point to the old URL, and since redrooffs is my personal site I will maintain a redirect indefinitely.

2In 2002 and 2004, there were only "deep link" hits from harmony-central.com (no page views).

3Syntronics (formerly on charter.net) was pointing to redrooffs.com/chroma until about mid-December 2006, when it was updated to link to the site's new url.

4Synrise was still linking to redrooffs.com/chroma until about mid-2007.

5The page (~clark/emusic/rhodes/chroma.html) has disappeared as of 2009.

6Site down as of 2009.

7sirius.com/~three/cryan/chroma was the original home of the Chroma site in 1999, redirected to redrooffs.com/chroma as of January 2000 and removed by 2001. (Sirius was an ISP in the California Bay Area; sirius.com is now owned by a satellite radio company.)

8rhodes.freeservers.com was home to the Rhodes Information Site (see archive.org copy from October 1999), later merged with fenderrhodes.com.

It is interesting to see how sites come and go. Wikipedia has quickly become the number one referring site. The auction sites have come out of nowhere; eBay is a good source of visitors, along with craigslist. A few have been remarkably consistent over the years. In particular, the Rhodes Super Site, Synth Zone, Vintage Synth Explorer, Don Tillman's site, and The Ultimate ARP Odyssey Information Resource Page have been great sources of visitors for the Chroma site.