In March 2003,the GPF web site attracted 1,100,000 hits in a single week. For 2002 as a whole, the site logged a total of 16.8 million hits from an estimated 1.9 million visitors. What follows provides a bit more detail and history.
The site first went up with 36 document files in March 1996. By the end of 2002 it had grown to over 10,000 document files, the equivalent of nearly 30,000 text pages. Site hits have doubled each year, reaching the one million mark in 1998, 2 million in 1999 and 4 million in 2000, 8 million in 2001 and over 16 million in 2002. Projections sugggest over 32 million hits from 3.7 million visitors in 2003.
Of the 118,340 weekly visitor sessions in the week of March 23, 2003, slightly over half came from those who visited just once, while the remaining visits were from those who visited repeatedly. There were 75,250 unique visitors in the reference week, 10,797 visitors who visited more than once, and 306,693 page views.
Usage data from different sections of the site indicate that visitors are broadly interested in GPF's work but the material on Iraq was especially heavily-used during this period. Sections on Security Council, NGOs, globalization, and economic/social policy have been especially active, followed by international justice, UN finance and nations & states. Our special sections on sanctions, resources in conflict and global taxes have drawn considerable interest. The site has regularly won prizes, both for overall excellence and for the quality of particular sub-sections.
Site usage changes from week to week, due to current events, to annual calendar rhythms, and to the patterns of our posting. A big international crisis like Iraq draws visitors, especially when it directly involves the UN. Major holidays -- especially the Christmas-New Year period -- register as a substantial decline.
We know that visitors to the site come from a large number of countries. The greatest number of visitors come from the United States, Britain and Canada, but significant numbers regularly visit from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Denmark, Australia, India, New Zealand and Japan. There have also been many recent visitors from China, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Netherlands, Indonesia, Thailand, Belgium, Italy, Finland, Nigeria and South Africa -- to name just a few.
University-based visitors were until 1998 the largest single identifiable category (probably due to the wider availability of web-accessible computer systems in university settings at that time). But office and home-based visitors (using hosts like AOL in the United States) have now surpassed those using university hosts. There also appear to be a large number of users from citizen organizations (NGOs), governments (including missions at the UN) and inter-governmental bodies (especially the UN).
GPF often hears directly from visitors, who send messages from the "mailers" on the site. Many sign on to our mailing list, join as members and pledge contributions. Many intern applicants have applied after visiting the site. And we have built an electronic network of like-minded scholars and activists through acquaintances made as a result of site visits.
We are delighted that that the site is so popular and will continue to work hard to make it more useful to interested visitors world-wide.
