AFF Statistics

[ORSM-XT]

Thanks for that!

ORSM Ford Cruiser's FTW!!! we will take the title eventually

[buggerlugs]

Originally Posted by Elks

And 6 normal members...




Sorry, couldn't resist.

And I'm one of those six !! ( had to get in early )

[russellw]

The thread has been made sticky and I will endeavour to update it on a regular basis.

Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

The earlier discussion got me to thinking about how we compare against other Australian Forums as well as the global ones so here are a couple of quick grabs.

By posts (Australia)- AFF ranked 8th


By members (Australia) - AFF ranked 7th


By activity (Australia) - AFF ranked 2nd


Note that NR means the board was not ranked in the top 400 for this last week.

By posts (Global) - -AFF ranked 75th


By members (Global) - -AFF ranked 43rd


By traffic (Global) - -AFF ranked 9th


Mind you it's a long way to reach the top board - a Japanese Anime forum with 1.6 billion posts and 19.8 million members!

Cheers
Russ

Cheers
Russ

[Riksta]

I'm actually surprised to see the SA/WA/NT Events section so high above NSW/ACT but then again we do have three states compared to the two, but I thought that the NSW population (esp. Sydney) would have well outdone us!!!

Is there a way to pull a graph on users by location (such as state)? I realise that this may not be entirely possible due to having to get each member to put in a State somewhere in the user profile. But I would be interested to see the breakdown in the membership like where we're all from by state, age range, gender (probably 95% male although I do know of a few females that post here).

Thanks for taking the time to do those stats and post up the rankings though, I am actually quite surprised to see how high we are actually ranked, and 20gig a day, holy crap that's pretty big!!!

[russellw]

As promised here is the next update:

We will start with a look at where the posting activity comes from - firstly with a top level view (by raw numbers and percentage) and then for each main area of the forum.





No real surprise to see that the General area dominates with just over 30% of the total forum posts but the Club & Speciality area also ranks highly.

To break these down further:

General



The Pub and Bar dominate this area, making up 75% of the total post count in this area and almost 24% of the overall forum posts.

Clubs

For clarity this is divided into two sections - the car clubs and the AFF based clubs.





Ford Passenger Cars



A fairly even spread at the top of the table here with FPV/Boss just ahead of Contemporary and Territory.

The Workshop



Cleveland makes up 22% of this area - about twice as much as the next most popular Windsor and Ford 6's.

Events



Unique Monthly Visits

This metric depicts the number of unique visitors to the forum each month during the period since the inception of AFF. There are seasonal trends noticeable in the data but the numbers have grown from the ~20,000 per month in 2004 to around 90,000 now.


Weekly Posts

The average number of new posts per week is currently at 9,500 and that level of posting has been fairly consistent over the last couple of years.


Registrations

The chart below tracks the number of new valid registrations each week since inception. The level has been high in the latter part of this year so far.




Bandwidth

The chart below shows the amount of bandwidth used by AFF on a daily basis in Mb per day. The current level is ~ 20 Gb per day.



.. and the same for the number of pages served per day which hovers around the 600,00 mark.




.. and finally the number of server database responses per day which is currently ~ 1,800,000 per day.




Cheers
Russ

[DJM83]

Thanks Russ its always interesting to have a look at that info

[POELWYK]

yeah thanks russ its is good to see stuff like this ir realy shows how manny people use theres forums

[Geez Louise]

I find the statistics really interesting. How often will you be updating these Russ? Monthly, quartly or just whenever??

[russellw]

I'll try to do the updates about the middle of each month.

Top Level views:





General

Dominated by the Pub and Bar with just over 75% of the posts in this section and 24.7% of all posts.



Car Clubs

Divided into the Incorporated and Forum based clubs.

The car clubs is a neck and neck race with the ORSM Ford Cruisers holding a slight lead over the Qld XR & FPV Club.





Passenger Cars

Also a neck and neck race with Contemporary holding a slight lead over Territory with a bit over 15% each.



The Workshop

Lead comfortably by Cleveland with a bit over one in every five posts, most of the rest are fairly evenly split.



Unique Monthly Visits

This metric depicts the number of unique visitors to the forum each month during the period since the inception of AFF.



Registrations

The chart below tracks the number of new valid registrations each week since inception.



Bandwidth

The chart below shows the amount of bandwidth used by AFF on a daily basis in Mb per day. The current level is ~ 20 Gb per day.

Note: The format of these charts has been changed this month to provide a 3 year comparison based on average per day.



Responses

The chart below shows the number of server response requests per day. The current level is ~ 1.9 million per day.



Pages

The chart below shows the number of pages served per day. The current level is ~ 540,000 per day.



Cheers
Russ

[Geez Louise]

Server response requests....1.9million per day?? I am sure that is not an error...WOW! That is alot of changing the threads you view, refreshing and loggin on etc!

[russellw]

Unique Monthly Visits

This metric depicts the number of unique visitors to the forum each month during the period since the inception of AFF - currently sitting about the 90,000 level.




Registrations

The chart below tracks the number of new valid registrations each week since inception, compared by year. The peak experienced in the latter part of last year seems to be continuing at around the 450-500 a week level.



Bandwidth

The chart below shows the amount of bandwidth used by AFF on a daily basis in Mb per day. The current level is ~ 19.5 Gb per day in January and slightly less during February thus far.

Note: The format of these charts has been changed this month to provide a 3 year comparison based on average per day.



Responses

The chart below shows the number of server response requests per day. The current level is ~ 1.8 million per day for January.



Pages

The chart below shows the number of pages served per day. The current level is ~ 525,000 per day, slightly below the same time last year.



It's interesting to look at the data in the chart below which compares the raw numbers of the three key metrics between 2010 and 2008 -



.. in this we can see that while we have almost tripled the quantity of data being delivered, added 31% to the total responses (and added 14% to the number of unique visitors); the page count has only increased by 10.5%.

This suggests several things...

1. We are delivering more graphical content (which increases the data used for any given quantity of pages) - supported by the fact that the average data per page has gone from 14.5 to 36.9 Mb over the period. Some of this is in larger avatars, user tags and things like the reputation smilies as well as longer pages

2. Page loads have been reduced by the change to longer default page lengths for threads - supported by the fact that each visitor now loads 6 pages less per month than they did two years ago but has 80 more server responses

3. There are more non posting readers than we had at the same time two years ago

Cheers
Russ

[Duffman]

Hi Russ, is there a comparison of which countries people are surfing from e.g. Aus, USA, UK etc? It would be interesting to see how much international traffic the site receives

[russellw]

We do get country stats out of the data and I shall put some up later today. For the last couple of years we have largely blocked registrations from outside the AU/NZ domains although we stil get guests from other countries naturally. Last time I looked AU accounted for about 80% of our traffic.

Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

To make sense of the country stats they are divided into the larger group and the smaller group.

Australia and NZ make up a little over 75% in total although there are 143 countries represented overall.

[russellw]

... and while on the subject of interesting stats, here are the hours of use broken down by percentage.

The first chart looks at the raw data while the second one breaks that down into 4 hour time slices.






Just about half (51.6%) of our activity is between the hours of 4 p.m and midnight while 41.9% is during "normal" working hours of 8 a.m - 5 p.m.

Cheers
Russ

[Geez Louise]

Russ on the graph for Country stats, what do the numbers in the left column represent and the ones above the bar graph?

[russellw]

March 2010

Unique Monthly Visits

This metric depicts the number of unique visitors to the forum each month during the period since the inception of AFF - currently running around 94,000 per month.



Registrations

The chart below tracks the number of new valid registrations each week since inception - currently running at 450-500.



Bandwidth

The chart below shows the amount of bandwidth used by AFF on a daily basis in Mb per day. The current level is ~ 20 Gb per day.

Note: The format of these charts has been changed this month to provide a 3 year comparison based on average per day.




Responses

The chart below shows the number of server response requests per day. The current level is ~ 1.75 million per day.



Pages

The chart below shows the number of pages served per day. The current level is ~ 495,000 per day.



It's interesting to look at the data in the chart below which compares the raw numbers of the three key metrics between 2010 and 2008 -




Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

Originally Posted by Geez Louise

Russ on the graph for Country stats, what do the numbers in the left column represent and the ones above the bar graph?

Sorry, I should have put axis labels on them - I have done so now. The vertical axis is number of hits as are the numbers above - the latter were added for clarity.

Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

While we're on the Webalizer log files here are the summary stats for the last 6 months to the end of March.

Total Hits



Total Visits



Total Pages Served



Total Files Served



Total Data Delivered



Cheers
Russ

[Falc'man]

First time I see this thread... awesome work mate. It (the forum) is a great service to Ford, and all the blue-bloods.

Originally Posted by Grunter

Very interesting data.

What blows my mind is that Ford and FPV don't seem to want to take any interest or advantage of this continually growing Automotive community.

Imagine FPV contributing to the forums by doing something along the line of what the SRT engineers do with the Chrysler community forums and talk to their owners about their current and possiblely upcoming models and why they may have made decisions a certain way, etc. Or Ford inviting forum members to exclusive previews of new/upcoming models as they did back in 2002, etc.

Hell clearing up misinformation from their dealers and posting the correct answers to general questions (aka the iPhone update for the FG's) would be a hugh benefit to their customer and also show potential future customers that their isnt a wall of silence.

So many possibilities to solidify and also grow their market if they had the smarts to do it in a control manner.

Apologies for the rant, but seeing info like Russell's makes it even more obvious that there is this canyon between Ford/FPV and their current, possible repeat and new customers.

Well put on all counts.

[russellw]

..and finally (for today) a quick look at how we have progressed amongst the Australian forums ranked by BigBoards.



We currently sit 7th in overall rank amongst the Australian forums, having overtaken the defunct Overclockers Australia but we are 3rd for both new posts in the last 6 months (led by Whirlpool) and posts per member (led by Big Footy).

As the overall rank is based simply on post count we will surpass the defunct Skylines Australia shortly but that is likely to be as far as we go for awhile when the next one the list has more than 5.5 million posts.

Globally, we rank 11th for Ford based forums and should shortly take the 10th spot from the defunct Passion Ford. We will probably take 9th spot before the end of the year as there is another defunct site holding that position.



Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

Statistics for May.

First up the Webalizer log files.

Total Files

Just under 32 million for this month and an average of 31.1 million over the last 18 months.



Total Hits

Just over 53 million for this month and an average of 52.5 million over the 8 month period.



Total Data

Around 595 Gb this month and an 8 month average of 578 Gb.



Total Pages

A major increase this month with 48.6 million pages served - well up on the 17 million last month and the 8 month average of 16 million.



Total Visits

Also up substantially with 4.5 million for the month and a longer term average of 2.2 million.



Country of Origin

The first chart looks at the major sources with Australia making up 68.92% of the total visits with a further 17% unresolved and 1.49% from New Zealand.



The second chart looks at the minor countries with the UK topping that table ahead of Canada and Germany.



Hours of Use

The two tables below look at the hours of use by percentage. For this month 8-9pm has a small lead over 7-8pm as you would expect.



The second table breaks this down into 4 hour blocks where we can see that 4-8pm time slice is the busiest, just ahead of the 8-midnight one. Worth noting that 36% of the total daily traffic is between the hours of 8 a.m and 4 p.m.

[russellw]

Now for the remaining statistics.

Registrations

New registrations are still up substantially on previous years and the last week of May showed a steep increase (to 923) after we made some changes to the amount of visible content when guest numbers were higher than members on-line!



Data

Average daily data served during may was fractionally above 19 Gb despite the several days of server related issues. This is well up on the 9 Gb of a year ago but slightly down on April.



Unique Visits

Unlike total visits in the previous post, this looks at unique visits over the month. During May this was just over 91,000.



Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

Finally, forum activity.

Summary

The first two charts look at the overall top level category headings in raw numbers and percentage.

As usual, the General area dominates with almost exactly one third of all posts, ahead of the Club and Ford Passenger sections.





Sections

The General section is dominated by the Pub with 44.2% of the posts (slightly up from when we last looked) followed by the Bar (30.5% and slightly down) with Show'nShine slightly up (8.7%) in third place.



The Club section is still led by ORSM Cruisers (19%) ahead of the FPV/XR Club of Queensland (17.7%) and the Ford Coupe Club (12.2%).



The forum based car clubs continue to be led by OzECruisers (down 4% to 44.9%), ahead of AU Falcon (down slightly to 27.5%) and B-Series (up slightly to 19.7%).



The Passenger Car section (after some changes were made to the format) is now led by FPV and Boss Powered (with 17.5%) ahead of Territory (16%) and Contemporary (15.8%).



The Workshop area is dominated by Cleveland with 22% of the posts followed by LPG (11.2%) and Ford 6 (10.2%).



Cheers
Russ

[russellw]

As 2010 has drawn to a close, it is an appropriate time to revisit the statistics for the year gone.

First up we'll have a look at the Total Hits by month for the last 3 years - currently running at around the 58 million a month mark and totalling just over 619 million for the year - or about 4.2% more than in 2009. The second chart depicts the server responses on a daily average basis.





Next are the total number of pages served - running around the 17 million mark per month and totalling a little over 202 million for the year or about 2.4% less than in 2009 mostly due to the change we made to the number of search results returned. The second chart shows this on an average daily basis.





Next are the total number of unique visits - running around the 1.6 million mark per month and totalling a little over 23.5 million for the year or about 27.7% more than in 2009 although there is a noticeable drop since July after we changed how visiting bots and guests were treated. The second chart shows this on a daily average basis for the last 3 years by month.






Finally, for this series, a look at the New User registrations for the last 6 years - substantially up in 2010 despite the changes we have made (the impact of which can be seen in weeks 21-24).




Cheers
Russ

[ThaFlash]

wow! KPIs for a forum! wicked.

have you got a stat on revenue raised from ads, site sponsors etc...?
it can be in percentage increase over the years rather than dollar value.

i mean it wouldn't be cheap running this site would it?

also what would the AFF site be worth you reckon, $50,000, $60,000?

it's all amazing to me, this little mixture of biologicals, technology and knowledge all to do with machines.

truly amazing!

[Revolver]

Russ looking at that graph, that is more than a "substantial" amount. Those figures are quite astounding. Especially looking at weeks 20-26 & 44-52.any reason for this explosion of membership? That's a massive influx. Especially given the baselines of previous years.

[GT]

Originally Posted by Blue Beast II

Russ looking at that graph, that is more than a "substantial" amount. Those figures are quite astounding. Especially looking at weeks 20-26 & 44-52.any reason for this explosion of membership? That's a massive influx. Especially given the baselines of previous years.

20 - 26 was during a trial phase where only Registered Membership could see any of the AFF and to view they had to Register. It was removed after that point. The latter weeks has no real explanation. Perhaps it could be attributed to the economy and people going out less, the new S/charged Ford product or a combination of both.

GT

[Geez Louise]

Originally Posted by ThaFlash

i mean it wouldn't be cheap running this site would it?

I shouldn't think it would be!....that is why I became a Donating member. Anything I can do to help keep this great site up and running is an excellent investment in my book.

Thanks for posting the stats Russ. Any chance of getting a qtrly?/yearly? breakdown of the sub sections as per your previous posts?

Cheers
Coll