Monthly Stats

It's pretty clear that the election campaign got everybody sizzling during September and October.

If it was just my stats that showed the big bump for those two months, then I'd have to come up with some other explanation. For instance, I only posted 119 times in November. That's the lowest number of posts I've made in a month since a year ago September. But then I made more posts in July and August than I did during September and October, so the theory that more posts equals more hits still hasn't been supported by the actual numbers. The trend over the last several months into November, sans bump, is pretty much the same regardless of the number of times I've posted each month.

The campaign season bump was probably experienced by just about everybody. I know that InstaPundit had an election campaign bump, but it tapered off during October, unlike mine. And I can see that 4rilla had a massive bump for September and a dropoff in October, as well. The major pundit that had a statistical bump during September and October similar to mine was Andrew Sullivan.

I attribute it to Sarah Palin. I made over two dozen posts about the train wreck that is Sarah Palin, while Andrew made a career out of that subject. And she's the gift that just keeps on giving, because Andrew was still posting about Sarah Palin through November. His stats are still riding double what they had always been before.

The theory that what you post about will have an effect on hits, ...that one may be true, and it seems to be true in this case. But attempting to measure or quantify that beforehand would, in my view, be nearly impossible.