Hmmm... Sustained traffic without growth.    That’s probably the first thought when you take a look on the graph below (where ‘visitors’ are unique monthly visitors and ‘robots’ include traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes). I would like to understand why it is sustained, what's the meaning of it. Internet size was growing these years, probably exponentially, so the first thought is that the interest for my website, because of its quality and/or subjects selection, was declining. It may be not so simple, however, because in last couple of years there was a significant geographical shift in the internet traffic as well as in the GR website visitors. Does it mean that the decline is, actually, even worse or something else?

What about the GR website profile? Why did I start the site? From the very beginning I’ve believed that internet does not fit well into human nature. It is too large, too complicated. The flood of information is not as great but it seems more fun. My assumption was that I can built a rather small and simple domain of internet visited by people very similar to me, in a spirit that what we agree is more important than what we disagree. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I’ve introduced a glossary under the assumption that there will be visitors preferring my notion of a term used at the site as opposed to choose one from the list in a general dictionary.

Let’s assume that the curves on the plot are essentially S-shaped, i.e. the sigmoid function of growth of some population. (Notice that the value axis is exponential!) The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as saturation begins, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops. In the GR website case, all the growth is practically done in the first three years. Does it mean that my "domain" is built and that the sustained traffic simply denotes the life of the domain? Not likely, even remote. The truth is, three years were enough for me to realize that the "domain" task is too demanding (well, even if I’m fit for it, but let’s put that aside for now). After three years I’ve uploaded very few pages for the chapters Handbook, Country Living, and Gardening. And those chapters are still most visited ones. It shows also by the dozen top keyphrases generating hits and visits. Photo albums, however good they might be, and weekly blogs are scarcely visited. So, it’s my lack of creativity to blame for the sustained traffic without growth. A change in the internet character could be just a nice excuse, maybe.

WEBSITE  EDITOR:
Krešimir J. Adamić