Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Way back in FCM#12 (the first anniversary issue), I discussed the site statistics for that first year. I thought I’d look back from then until now. It’s been just over seven years since that first report, so a lot has changed since then. Let’s take a trip back in time… What I’m doing here is comparing August 2007–March 2008 with August 2014–March 2015.
Browser As of now, the most popular browser (to visit the site) is Firefox with over 60,000 sessions. Over 35,000 of those are new visitors. Chrome comes in second with 48,000 sessions and 30,000 new users. Surprisingly, Safari is next with 7,500 and 4,400 new users. Good old Internet Explorer has 5,100 and 3,600 new users. Android browser is next with 2,800 and 1,600 respectively. Opera has only 2,700 and 1,400 new users. Back in 2007 it was a different story. Firefox was still in first place, but with almost 200,000 sessions and 138,000 new users. Second was Internet Explorer with 33,000 and 25,000. Then came Opera with 14,000 and 8,100. Fourth was Konqueror with 5,400 and 3.200. Next came Mozilla with 5,400 and 3,800, then Safari with 2,600 and 2,000.
Language Currently the most popular language is, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, English. With over 60,000 US and 12,000 UK visitors with 40,000 and 7,000 new users respectively. Third is French with 5,000 sessions and 3,000 new users. Next comes Italian and German with around 4,000 sessions each and 3,000 new users. Italian creeps in again on the list with a further 3,000 sessions. Not sure how it’s getting counted twice there. Dutch is next with 2,500 and 1,500, followed by Spanish with 2,000 and 1,000. Another mention of English with 2,000, and another mention of Spanish with 1,900. At first glance the 2007 and 2014 graphs may look similar, but they’re actually very different. Back then, again, US English was top of the list with over 130,000 sessions and 94,000 new users. Second, though, was French with 13,000 and 10,000. Third was Chinese with 11,000 and 8,000, and in fourth place we have a mention of English. No UK or US on this mention, so we have to assume it’s Other English, but it has 11,000 sessions and almost 7,000 new users. Next, was Italian with 11,000 and 7,700. Following Italian was German with 10,000 and 7,000 new users. Seventh was UK English with 8,700 and 5,800 new users. Spanish, Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese has sessions of 8,300, 5,500 and 4,600 respectively. Bear in mind that back in that first year/two, we had a lot of active translation teams. Now we have only a handful.
Location Although you may think language and location would be the same. They’re not. You might have an Italian who’s living in the UK whose location is marked as UK, but they’re downloading the Italian translation. Currently the US and the UK are top of the chart with 25,000 and 12,000 sessions (16,000 and 7,000 new users). Next comes Italy (9,400 and 5,700), Germany (6,500 and 4,200), France (5,200 and 3,100), Canada (4,700 and 2,700—possibly the source of the ‘other’ English hits), Netherlands (4,000 and 2,300), India (3,400 and 2,600), Australia (3,200 and 1,700—probably another ‘other’ English), and last, but not least, Spain with 3,000 and 1,900. As ever, top of the list in 2007–2008 was the US with 48,000 sessions and 34,000 new users. Second was Italy with 16,000 and 11,000. Next came France (16,000 and 12,000), China (15,900 and 11,700), Germany (14,000 and 10,000), UK (12,000 and 8,400), Spain (10,000 and 6,600), Hungary (8,000 and 5,900), and both Canada and Brazil had around 7,000 sessions and 5,200 new users.
Operating System One thing to remember here is that this is the OS that you were using when you visited the site. Not the one you like the most. So if you were at work, using Windows, and cheekily downloaded FCM, then that’s a markup for Windows. At the moment, the most sessions come from Linux (surprise!) with 56,000 and 31,000 being new users. Second place goes to Windows (version unknown) with 45,000 and 29,000 new users. Next comes Android (16,000 and 9,700), iOS (6,500 and 4,000), Macintosh (6,000 and 3,900), Chrome OS (493 and 300), Windows Phone (300 and 240), ‘not set’ (300 and 250), Blackberry (190 and 140), and lastly UNIX with only 40 sessions and 35 new users. I’m surprised by the low amount of iOS sessions. It’s almost a third of Android. Even adding Macintosh and iOS it’s still only two thirds of the Android visits. OK. This is where things start getting weird. If you thought seeing UNIX mentioned in 2014 was weird. Wait until you see what was happening in 2007. First on the list was Windows (surprise!) with 126,000 sessions with 93,000 new users. Linux came second with a close 123,000 and 81,000 new users. Third was Macintosh with 7,000 and 5,300. Fourth was ‘not set’ with only 800 and 640. Next came an odd bunch; FreeBSD (100 and 90), SunOS (80 and 60), iPod (30 and 25), SymbianOS (26 and 24), iPhone (20 and 15), and in at last place was the PS3 with 15 sessions and a mere 9 new users! That just goes to show how operating systems have changed in just seven years.
Referrals This is a bit of an oddball one, but I thought I’d throw it in anyway. Sites come and go, as do spam/junk links, so this one is to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. Currently, we get the most referrals from feedly.com (2,400) followed by Twitter (t.co) with almost 2,000. Google+ serves up 1,300, hotukdeals (?!) seems to throw over 1,000 our way, with Planet Ubuntu being somewhat similar. People jumping straight to the download link account for about 900 visits, with Reddit passing us 880. Surprising considering I never post links to FCM on Reddit. I might make an exception for FCM#100 though. LXLE.com is next with 750, Ubuntu Forums with 700, and last is Daily Ubuntu with 600. Back in 2007 it looked completely different. The most referrals came from StumbleUpon with almost 14,000. Second was the Ubuntu Fridge site with 11,000. Third was the Ubuntu Hungary site with a touch over 6,000. Google came in at fourth with over 6,000. I assume from folks searching for ‘ubuntu magazine’, or something similar. Next came Ubuntu Users with 6,000, Planet Ubuntu France (5,400), Linux Toy (5,200), Full Circle Magazine (how?!) with 5,000, DistroWatch sent us 3,400, and Opennet.ru with 3,000.
That Was Then So, there you have it. It does seem like readership has dropped somewhat since 2007. I’ve no idea why, but it might be down to the magazine being something of a novelty back then. It might be that a lot of folks have moved on to other things, thereby losing interest in Linux and, thus, the magazine. It’s up to you, the readers, to help spread the word and bring FCM to more new users.