For those who care, here is a snapshot of our readers.

Views from unique IPs seem to run about 700 per day, with a significant drop on week-ends and over holidays. The data below is from November/December; see the big drop during Thanksgving. “Unique IP” is not the same thing as “unique reader.” If I view EphBlog from home and work, that counts as 2 IP’s. See here for more details. But, big picture, we have hundreds of daily readers.

This data seems representative of our experience over the last year or so. Updated data here. (Those interested can click on the SiteMeter and Extreme Tracking buttons on the bottom of the right side-panel and explore at their leisure. Like all good scholars, we believe in transparency at EphBlog. Readers are invited to poke around and comment.)

Why do these hundreds of readers come to EphBlog each day? Good question! Some are truly interested in All Things Eph. But many are interested in less, uh, exalted topics. See here for a listing of the search strings that bring people to EphBlog. Some are clearly relevant. Others, not so much.

Where do those readers come from?

You can get the latest data here. The 23% figure for “williams.edu” is larger than normal and depends a great deal on the time of day. It also leaves out our Williamstown readers who access EphBlog from their homes. (Note the value for “rr.com” is often high. I think that this refers to the “Road Runner” cable service which, although bought out at least twice in the last decade, may still have a presence in the Berkshires.) I also get the sense that some sophisticated users mask their origin even when accessing from the Williams campus. My very rough guess is that about 1/3 of our readers are students/faculty/staff. Readership drops dramatically when students are away from campus.

We also use Google Analytics (thanks Eric!) which provides a handy breakdown of repeat visitors and sources. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out a way to copy those graphics here or to give open access to the data. Sorry! (If any reader with a Google Account really wants to see this stuff, we can add you to the account. Let me know.) In any event, about 2/3 of our visitors are “repeat,” meaning that the same IP address has been to EphBlog before in the recent past, whether that is yesterday or sometime in the past month.

In other words, 2/3 of our readers are regular. They come to EphBlog to find out about All Things Eph. If 1/3 are students/faculty/staff — as determined by sourcing and traffic patters during school breaks — then another 1/3 are probably alumni/parents/friends. The remaining 1/3 stop by once, looking for a random fact, and never come back again.

Needless to say, this is all very rough. I think that the student/faculty/staff proportion is more likely to be below 1/3 and the alumni/parent/friend share above it.

Yet, the basic message doesn’t change much. EphBlog has hundreds (not scores and not thousands) of readers (students/alumni/faculty/staff/parents/applicants) who come here most every day to read about All Things Eph. Whether that number is a pathetically small or impressively large depends on your point of view.