Latest stats on Access World Forums (AWF) and Utter Access...

[Uncle Gizmo]

Here are the latest stats on Access World Forums (AWF) and Utter Access...

Checking AWF hit Count...

THE HIT COUNT is HERE: AWF Thread Link I’ve been checking website traffic stats again—something I do from time to time. Since I haven’t seen this kind of data published on AWF before, I thought I’d start a thread. The numbers make for interesting reading! According to SimilarWeb: Forums...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

Well I don't think it will come as any surprise to anyone that visits to the site have dropped off significantly over the past month. My guess is that less people are working on MS Access in their jobs, if indeed they still have a job! I am only showing a comparison between the two top sites, Access World Forums (AWF) and Utter Access. It would be interesting to know if anyone has noticed a similar drop off on other MS Access sites?

 

[Jon]

Sadly Uncle, it is a Google thing. They are providing most of the traffic but they have devalued some forums, instead favouring a different type of content. As mentioned in a post a few weeks back, around May 5th there was a sudden drop in traffic for many site owners with Xenforo. I suspect the same for other forum platforms too. Their big algo update ruffled a few feathers.

The thing about communities is volume. You need a critical mass of users. Without that, the site becomes less valuable. It is oxygen for sites to continue to breath. You can then get an implosion. I feel that UA will be the first to suffer the most. They are a smaller site with less volume, so they could reach a tipping point sooner than AWF. Maybe that would indirectly help AWF if there was an eventual exodus from UA to AWF. Both sites are in the hands of the Google Gods. A change of priority here, a policy decision there, and whole sites and businesses can be wiped out in an instant.

Edit: Just done some calculations. Google has reduced traffic to this site by 35% in the last month.

 

[Jon]

Wow, just did a bit of research. I counted the posts from yesterday on UA. They had 22 posts. I had no idea it was so few. We had 256. They only had 7 posts the day before to our 267. I am shocked!

I think the traffic numbers between both sites are more to do with the total post counts for each site, as opposed to the size of the active community. Although they are a competitor, I find it a little sad really. These places are lovely pockets of communities where people can meet and exchange ideas. I find places like Reddit and Stackexchange lack that community feel, even if they can be effective for getting answers to things.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Sadly Uncle, it is a Google thing.

I suspect the corona virus epidemic is having a toll as well.. You're getting a double whammy, one from Google and one from the virus... I wonder if Excel forums have noticed a similar drop?

 

[Jon]

I didn't notice much difference due to Coronavirus. It was a sudden drop. Check the data below:

It is highly likely that the Excel forums also got hit. From the Xenforo community, those with tech sites got hit particularly badly.

 

[deletedT]

We had 256

How many of this count was from watercolor, politic and other not technical sub forums?

 

[Jon]

Only a manual count would reveal that data. Do you think the Access related post counts are similar?

 

[Isaac]

I find places like Reddit and Stackexchange lack that community feel, even if they can be effective for getting answers to things

True. And they are overwhelmingly full of rules dedicated to minutia involving rules of posting, answering, solving, commenting, and reactions. Overkill

 

[Jon]

I've just looked at the search function again on UA, and I may have misinterpreted how it works. I clicked the New Posts link and counted those I saw by date. But it looks like they might group the posts by thread and only show them once in that list. If that is the case, then my original conclusion will be way off.

Does anyone know how to get a list of all posts for yesterday on UA, as opposed to just a list of active threads? I am curious over the difference between us and them.

My guestimate would have been based on traffic volume, hence my shock.

 

[deletedT]

Does anyone know how to get a list of all posts for yesterday on UA, as opposed to just a list of active threads? I am curious over the difference between us and them.

Normally I go to advance search type * as keyword and select a date.
It gives me all the post from the date I'm searching.

 

[Jon]

Thanks for that Tera. I must be doing something wrong. I clicked Search top right, put * in Search by Keywords, then under Refine Search, did 7 days ago and...Newer. The error I got was I was below 3 characters.

 

[deletedT]

Sorry I didn't notice your question was about UA. I thought you're asking about AWF.
My apologies.

 

[Jon]

For AWF, I have those stats in the backend. I read earlier that the programmer for their software had deliberately mangled it so it is unintelligible to someone else. I didn't realise thats a thing some programmers do. Sucks.

 

[isladogs]

Wow, just did a bit of research. I counted the posts from yesterday on UA. They had 22 posts. I had no idea it was so few. We had 256. They only had 7 posts the day before to our 267. I am shocked!

I think the traffic numbers between both sites are more to do with the total post counts for each site, as opposed to the size of the active community. Although they are a competitor, I find it a little sad really. These places are lovely pockets of communities where people can meet and exchange ideas. I find places like Reddit and Stackexchange lack that community feel, even if they can be effective for getting answers to things.

Whilst I was aware the UA currently has fewer visitors and posts than AWF, I was very surprised by those figures which seemed far too low.
Before seeing your later reply in post #9, I asked a couple of the UA moderators if they could run a post count and got the following data in reply

So, whilst lower than AWF, the data in post #3 was indeed incorrect

 

[Jon]

Thanks for those figures. I was very surprised too. That seems much more in line with what the traffic figures would suggest. Normal service has been resumed.

With Google hobbling both sites, who knows what the future holds.

 

[Jon]

For those who are interested, the figures here are:

 

[isladogs]

I would also be interested in a count of the AWF Access related posts for those dates as I suspect that a significant proportion of those figures are for areas such as the watercooler and politics & current events. UA has very few non-technical posts.

 

[Jon]

I don't think there is any way to automate that calculation. You can always look in the Watercooler, Politics forum etc and do a manual count for one of the days, then subtract it from those figures I posted. But the backend won't automate that.

 

[Deleted member 147267]

Seems that you can also search just the watercooler for posts later than 06/18/2020 (so today?) using * as a search term. I got 29. Does that make sense? I didn't think to look to see if the posts actually had the asterisk character in them, or if it just accepted it as a wildcard for everything.