Northwood News ♦ June 2020

Almost a Quarter of a Million Hits for NFCCA Web in 2019

By Jacquie Bokow

Perhaps you’ll be interested in the kind of traffic the nfcca.org website generates. Perhaps not! But here’s the news anyway for last year.

Our total number of “hits” (or items downloaded) was 248,142, with an average of 20,678 per month. The monthly average of total “visits” — meaning individuals visiting at least one page of our website — was 4,040.

The most popular pages dealt with the NFCCA organization. They rank as follows:

The “Newsletter” page, which contains links to PDFs of past newsletters and the search engine for individual stories.
The “About” page with details about the NFCCA and our neighborhood, communications (listserv, Nextdoor, Twitter, Facebook), plus links to our government representatives and county services.
Our “Board” page, which lists current board members. I admit I was surprised that this was viewed almost 2,300 times last year!
Our “Area” page, which shows a map of NFCCA’s territory.
The “Join” page, which delineates what your dues do and don’t pay for, and where you can pay your dues online.
The current Northwood News rate card, which would only be of interest to business owners thinking of advertising.
The “Member Check” page, where neighbors can check their own member status. I guess the 1,739 people who visited this page last year must be the type of individuals who already paid their dues, as we certainly don’t have this many members!

Ten years of Northwood News articles are now searchable from the newsletter page. By far the most popular — with almost 2,000 downloads just in 2019 — is “ The Untold History of Gittings’ Cross Roads,” a two-part “History Corner(s)” column by Ken Hawkins that appeared in the October and December 2016 issues. This article (combined online into one story) consistently receives thousands of hits every year since it was published.

There was quite a run last October on views of the second in a series on making your own fermented foods. The article on making kombucha, by Risi Idiokitas, was downloaded almost 600 times, but only during that month. Recommended for some taking a class, perhaps?

More than 600 people downloaded our PDF on “ Animal Tracks” (under the “About” page, under “Environment”). This is this one-page printable sheet showing the hoof/paw prints of various animals (chipmunk, dog, squirrel, cat, skunk, rabbit, raccoon, deer, and bear).

International Visitors

The top foreign country by far was Germany, with more than 12,000 hits during 2019. Second up was the Czech Republic, with about half that number. This was followed by visits from the European Union, the Russian Federation, China, Ukraine, Brazil, and Kenya (there are too many more to list here). Throughout the entire year, we only had one visit each from the countries of Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Catalan Community, Guatemala, Namibia, Pakistan, Taiwan, and United Arab Emirates. I guess they didn’t find us too interesting.

A little weird are some of the “referrer” websites, meaning the sites that people jumped from to ours. I can’t help but wonder if something on our website translates into something profane in Russian (someone who speaks Russian, please check for me!). That, at least, would explain referrals from prostitutki-moskvi.msk.ru (as well as mydirtystuff.com, pornhive.org, doxysexy.com, and sexreliz.com). But what about allfoodindustry.ru, solitaire-game.ru, or sportcar.moscow? Just comrades idle at work? What about voloslove.ru (“volos” is “hair” in Russian) or www.pechikamini.ru (“stone fireplaces”)? Are Russian students using some of our articles on school-essay.ru? How can gambling in Russia (argo-casinos.ru, ivi-casinoz.ru) be involved?

Thesilverbee.com contains real estate news for Silver Spring, so perhaps they check out our neighborhood periodically. But www.nextgenerationshoes.fi, a website for footwear designed in Finland and assembled in Estonia?

I’ve saved the absolute strangest for last, of course: cannibalcheerleader.com. ■