This Saturday, while I was out shooting with three members of the Young clan, The Truth About Guns quietly passed an important milestone: two million unique readers per month. [Google Analytics screen cap after the jump.] To put that in context, here are some stats from an April 2013 article at adweek.com: “American Rifleman and America’s 1st Freedom, both of which are benefits of NRA membership, saw their circulations increase 14 percent to 1.9 million and 8 percent to 545,019, respectively, in the first half of the year versus the year-ago period. Handguns and Guns & Ammo, published by InterMedia Outdoors, saw their circ jump 16 percent to 137,648 and 7 percent to 416,224, respectively.” TTAG’s success is down to the hard work and passion of its writers, and the full faith and credit of its readers, who have spread the word throughout the Internets. My sincere thanks to both. We will continue our mission to provide the world’s best gun news, reviews and editorials until such time as our firearms freedom is guaranteed. And beyond! . . .
Impressive. Keep up the good work.
Average duration is 6 minutes? Given the amount of time I spend here ALONE several people must be bouncing before the page is done loading……
And nice work fellas (and KJW).
Pfff! I count for like, 200K of those people!
Sigh.. wish I had a life.
For the record, while you don’t count as 200k of them, you might count as “a few.” Uniques are tracked by cookies, so different platforms (PC, phone, etc.) by the same individual count as multiple uniques even though it’s only one person. If you clear your cookies after every session, you’re a unique every time you visit the site. But while a number of people do cross-platform browsing, and a few clear their cookies religiously, many don’t do the first, and the vast majority of people don’t do the second. So it’s still a solid number.
I browse on my PC and phone. So both my shrink and TTAG think I’m two people.
have you analyzed what types of stories generate the most views/longest visits?
I’d be curious to know that too, given a possible correlation between the high number of unique visitors, average of two pages read, not-insignificant dwell time, and very high number of new visitors in a month overall.
On the surface of it, looks like TTAG is doing a good job getting the word out.
Crunch those numbers for increased win and awesome!
Dirk, historically it’s been gun reviews. Topical articles attract a lot of attention all at once, but gun reviews just keep on giving.
I would like to know that too, but I bet it’s gun reviews. Any time I google for [gun] review, more often than not TTAG is the first hit or among the first few hits. Whatever they are doing for SEO is working.
We don’t do any SEO whatsoever. I think it’s black magic and so I just never implemented any of it. The most we do is title the articles properly so you can find them with a Google search.
Equating SEO to black magic might be the understatement of the century. Done incorrectly and you’re site will drop off Google for even the most relevant searches whenever they get a wild hair…
Thanks for all you do and high quality.
Do we have traffic stats for MDA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mayors Against All Guns?
As far as I know (and I have been wrong before) there is no way to get the numbers in the detail that RF posted about someone else’s site.
That said, I shot over to Alexa.com for a quick comparison. The Alexa ranking is basically how popular a given site is out of all the other websites in a given country…
TTAG ranks 4,939 in the U.S.
momsdemandaction.org ranks 132,040 in the U.S.
Ha! take that Sharon, your website, organization, and ideas are crap!
I suppose Sharon must blame your excessive views on all the support you get from those monsters in the gun industry! The 3 visits a day her site gets is sure reflective of what “90 percent of Americans want.” These people need to stick with the MSM to promote their socialist agenda, because the free enterprise of the internet sure ain’t working for them.
Bravo!!! This is my favorite page. God bless you and the staff.
Congratulations!
I’m very glad TTAG is around – I’ve learned a lot from the articles and reviews.
Good work, guys.
Only two orders of magnitude greater traffic is needed to achieve population penetration depth comparable to an MSM outlet.
/inb4 Dirk on “penetration depth”
Kinda puts the lie, as if there was any doubt, to gun ownership being on the way out in America. I don’t always agree with TTAG, but it’s a rare day when I don’t log onto the site.
+1, I love TTAG, It is usually the high point of my day…unless I’m traveling for work. I find the site and commenters to be highly entertaining. Unfortunately I can’t stop by every day as I’m usually traveling one week per month for work and I hate paying for wifi (and the mobile site kinda annoys me).
Hey guys — we’re unique! All two million of us!
And counting.
Well done TTAG! Love this site for all the great info and discussions. Particularly interested in the the DGUTD/IGOTD stories.
Hmmm… I wonder if that’s two million visitors unique within the month, or who are unique in the entire database – never before been here.
If the latter, that’s twenty-four million new people per year getting at least some gun truth and an idea of what we’re really like.
What a thought!
Pretty sure it’s the former. Takes the number of visitors during the time slot and removes duplicates.
That’s what I figured as well, but one can dream.
I would still bet that there is a SIGNIFICANT portion of that number that is brand new to the site. Judging by the “regular” names in the comments (an iffy metric at best, I know) I doubt there are a million and a half lurkers and trolls…..
Uniques are tracked by cookies, so different platforms (PC, phone, etc.) can make one individual count as several uniques, as can one person clearing cookies on his browser multiple times. Those are counted as unique within the month, not unique for all time. The Visits number in the top right is how many times the site was visited in that same period, without removing the duplicates. The ratio between those numbers is where the 46.83% new visitors come from. Take the 7.8M total pageviews and divide it by the 3.5M visits and you get the 2.2 average pages per visit number.
Do the multi-platform and clear cookies factors change the numbers a little? Yes, but they’re accepted as metrics because those kinds of issues affect all sites in basically the same way. So it’s a thumb on the scale, but it’s the same thumb, so it evens out over time.
Now when are you going to start using the large number of armed intellegntia (spelling?) to generate direct income?
Premium services, subscriptions, dead tree rags, insurances, member benefits, legislative action? Think NRA/GOA/NAGR/SAF/etc except with honest-to-God gun lovers who don’t take any political BS or have manufacturer’s biases…
Shut up and take my money!!!
I’m on board for everything except “premium services”.
Some of us can’t afford that sh!t, and extremely cheap (internet connection and putting up with advertising) accessibility to quality information is the best part about TTAG.
Premium services don’t mean you have content others don’t have access to.
There are people willing to pay a yearly fee just to help support the site and cover costs.
James,
You’ll notice that just below the Search TTAG box there is an option to Donate! via credit card (Probably not PayPal).
Until such time as RF and Dan figure out the best way to profitize this site I’m sure they will be glad to accept donations from any of us with the shekels to spare.
Let’s hope that along with being a very informative blog that there are more people waking up to what is going on in this country and are becoming very interested in their second amendment rights.
Wow, that is a CRAP LOAD of unique visitors. I knew you were growing, but I wouldn’t have guessed at that number. Good sign. And good job. Congratulations.
well-deserved, and keep going, no upper limit 🙂
Good work TTAG, if we get through this relatively unscathed we can be gratefull to the hardworking staff, Randy
Thanks!
Love the google analytics screen-cap, best of luck!
And more reviews plox!
Awesome.
I personally like the po po militarization articles.
They are most eye opening in my opinion, and have the potential to bring those lost souls over. The gun reviews are good to, now if I only had a yob to increase purchasing capacity.
Great site brothers and sisters!
You could always do what I do….I don’t own any guns. The credit card companies just let me shoot them….
And on the militarization issue…..
…. some good news yesterday with the indictment of a NC cop for voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of an 18YO mental kid that the parents had called the police to help get him to a mental hospital.
Money shot of the story…..the murdering cop saying “I don’t have time for this” before he cleared leather and plugged the 18YO as he was laying on the floor after being tazed.
http://portcitydaily.com/2014/02/03/officer-who-fatally-shot-schizophrenic-teen-charged-with-voluntary-manslaughter/
Nice job, I myself visit every day.
Congrats! Maybe now we can have less ads!
Like most people in the last few years, I am part of the growing masses, who consider themselves friends of the gun. Although I always considered myself pro 2A, I now have the disposable income “to put my money where my mouth is”. I suspect more & more people will soon come “out of the closet” about our constitutional rights, hence the uptick in page views for all things firearms related.
“Moms” in my household demanded (and received) a GLOCK 26 & GLOCK 30SF and Life membership to NRA.
Keep up the good work TTAG and I’ll keep reading.
Someone’s missing ear pro . . . go go gadget tinnitis?
Maybe he’s got plugs on under that mop on his head.
This is the 1st page I go too when I open my iPad. Great source of information, interesting and thought provoking articles and very entertaining. Keep up the good work.
Congrats RF, Nick, Dan, Chris, Tyler, Matt and guest contributors (hope I didn’t leave anyone out).Keep up the good work 🙂 we love you and you’re hard work (most of the time). I also love TTAK, but rarely have time to comment, just lurk.
Nice. Love the site. Wish the comment section was a little more modern though… Disqus maybe?
Tried that. It was not a good fit.
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