Irrational Exuberance

Local Leftyblogger The Wege joins with a chorus of leftybloggers to yip like a pack of chihuahuas about Hugh Hewitt's knees at the news that Hewitt's traffic is off:

Golden State hacks the numbers and Hugh Hewitt just isn't as popular as he used to be.

The article, by disgraced LATimes columnist and leftyblogger Michael Hiltzik, purports to show Hewitt's traffic off by 20%.

Hiltzik's article, unfortunately, is wrong.

I defy anyone to see a 20% decline in this data. Alexa summarizes the chart as a 2% increase in HughHewitt.com’s average reach over the last three months (to 124 per million). His traffic rank remains essentially unchanged as well (3 month change of -415 to his current rank of 18,957).

In short — Hiltzik’s premise doesn’t hold water.

Sitemeter's stats are notoriously hinky; my own Sitemeter is routintely 30-35% short of my server logs.

Which is about how far short of a full story Hiltzik apparently was.

Posted by Mitch at April 21, 2006 06:47 AM | TrackBack