Canyon News Web Traffic: Strong & Steady
By Laurel Busby
News & Information Editor
Since going online at the end of March, the Canyon News has received more than 32,000 page hits, 12,000 unique visitors, and 20,000 individual visits to the fledgling website.
The vast majority of visitors (86 percent) have come directly from a website link to an article, and the article with the most hits—1,424—is about Stephanie Kanan, a Canyon resident whose Marquez Knolls healthcare business, Oasis, burned in the Palisades Fire.
Kanan said the article gave her a way to support and advance her business after the tragedy and disarray of the fire, which required relocating Oasis to a small temporary location in Santa Monica.
“I promoted [the article] in lots of places: Next door, Instagram, Facebook,” Kanan said. “Publicity makes a difference.”
The second most-read article announced the opening of Vittorio’s, a Marquez Knolls restaurant that also was lost in the fire. Almost 500 readers checked out the article within a day of its Aug. 23 publication—the highest total of readers for one day--and another 300 readers later perused the profile of the owners and their journey to the Canyon.
Other well-read articles include coverage of LADWP’s undergrounding plans and two environmental pieces (“Air, Soil, and Dust Testing Results Released for Canyon Elementary” and “Zinc, Arsenic, and Nickel in the Air Have Stayed Within Historical Levels Since Mar. 5, SCAQMD Says”), which were printed in the spring. These articles took fourth, third, and fifth place respectively with 635, 643, and 516 readers each.
For all of the above-mentioned articles, the average readers spent three-to-five minutes reading the pieces. Each month the website had an average of 2,500 visits.
The Canyon Alliance launched Canyon News as a critical information service for the community, according to former Alliance President Doug Suisman. The goal was to create a central, level-headed, reliable, and trusted source for Canyon-focused news and information, especially during emergencies.
“In March, we engaged Laurel Busby as editor, and since then she has done an amazing job of producing a stream of well-researched and well-written articles about all aspects of Canyon life,” Suisman said. “Her long experience as a professional journalist is evident both in the straight news stories and the more than fifteen profiles of Canyon businesses. Many Canyon business owners have told us how much the articles have helped them survive the calamitous impacts of the fire. And the website statistics—a whopping 20,000 visits from 12,000 unique visitors in the first seven months since Canyon News was born—give evidence that this news service has been welcomed and embraced by the Canyon community.”
After publication, articles often went through phases of popularity with a burst of readers on initial publication, a second wave after the weekly newsletter, and a third (or fourth wave) as organizations, businesses, and individuals shared the links with a wider audience. For example, an Aug. 19 article about Resilient Palisades’ bioremediation campaign to reduce soil toxins had a second life on Nov. 4 with several new reads, while a Jun. 20 profile of Canyon Grocer and its owner Kurt Gurdal was one of the articles that happened to entice a reader this morning.
Mobile phones, which are used in 70 percent of website visits, are by far the most popular way of accessing Canyon News articles, although 29 percent of readers used their desktops and 1 percent used tablets as of Nov. 4.
