metabunk.org vs. pilotsfor911truth.org traffic

Mick West

Mick West

Administrator
Staff member
From one of the 9/11 threads, I followed this link, to find:
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=22665&st=20
You'll notice one very common theme among the "debunkers", they do not source anything, never use their real names, and expect everyone to believe them. This is perhaps why places like "Metabunk" are a virtual ghost town. It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
Now beside the fact that I'm a big fan of sourcing things, and I do use my real name, and only ban people for repeatedly violating the posting guidelines, I was a little bemused by the "virtual ghost town" comment. So I clicked on the link:
http://urlm.co/www.metabunk.org


Which was rather surprising, especially the "monthly visits: 2,659" as metabunk.org has been getting over 5,000 visits per day for the last year, and for the last couple of months has averaged over 10,000 visits a day. And we have several thousand pages, not 60.

If the "Last update" figure of 1/29/2014 were correct, then the monthly visitors should actually have been 418,000, not 2,659. However looking at the screenshot, it's from when metabunk.org was running on vBulletin, which was at least a year ago.

So I looked at the results for pilotsfor911truth.org
http://urlm.co/www.pilotsfor911truth.org


The problem here seems to be the use of the web site urlmetrics (urlm.co), which appears to be an incredibly obscure web site ranker than almost nobody uses. I can't even find any references to it. The much more commonly used web sites are Alexa.com and Similarweb.com

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/metabunk.org


http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pilotsfor911truth.org


http://www.similarweb.com/website/metabunk.org#/#pilotsfor911truth.org


Of those two, I've found similarweb.com to be most accurate, as the figures for monthly and weekly visitors match quite closely the figures I get from my own measurements using clicky.com, although they tend to go out of whack during unusual peaks, such as I got during the start of February.



With a current typical day:


The similarweb figures also are a good ballpark match for my stats from cloudflare.com (my CDN) for february


And the estimates for search traffic are consistent with the Google clicks


My main intent with this post is to simply correct the erroneous description of metabunk.org as a "virtual ghost town", as it's quite clear that description is based upon false data from a no-name site that uses figures that are the opposite of reality. It also seems clear that if there's a ghost town here, it's pilotsfor911truth, with just 15K visitors a month. But it does raise the question of why Rob Balsamo (@SpaceCowboy) would prefer to use the most obscure web site ranker there is. Is this an honest mistake, or an example of cherry picking? I invite Rob to clarify.
 
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deirdre said:
I know the OP is your way of debunking chemtrails..I clicked the link the first time. which doesn't lessen my confusion why youre being so argumentative.

as far as your website bunk https://www.metabunk.org/threads/metabunk-org-vs-pilotsfor911truth-org-traffic.3344/
Click to expand...

Yes, and this is why those statistics exist.

Total: 125 (members: 12, guests: 96, robots: 17)

The "robots" on this site artificially create higher rankings.

In short, the urlm site is to determine real traffic in case one wants to advertise on such a site. To keep it simple....Metabunk has a small amount of the same people clicking many links.

Now when is Mick going to learn that Banned means permanent and Suspended means temporary?

Has Mick figured out yet that Yost is not me?
 
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SpaceCowboy said:
Banned means permanent
Click to expand...
For someone that gives the impression precision in language is a must, you don't do yourself any favours.

ban1
ban/
verb
past tense: banned; past participle: banned
1.
officially or legally prohibit (something).
"parking is banned around the harbour in summer"
Content from External Source
You were banned for two days.
 
Balance said:
For someone that gives the impression precision in language is a must, you don't do yourself any favours.

ban1
ban/
verb
past tense: banned; past participle: banned
1.
officially or legally prohibit (something).
"parking is banned around the harbour in summer"
Content from External Source
You were banned for two days.
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand the concept. But anyone who understands forums across the net will notice that when members are shown as "Banned", that means permanent. When it says "Suspended" under their name, it means temporary.

Every forum from P4T to DebatePolitics to ATS to JREF.... the same. The list goes on...
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Yes, and this is why those statistics exist.

Total: 125 (members: 12, guests: 96, robots: 17)

The "robots" on this site artificially create higher rankings.

In short, the urlm site is to determine real traffic in case one wants to advertise on such a site. To keep it simple....Metabunk has a small amount of the same people clicking many links.
Click to expand...

Robots are not included in any of the figures I post above - and in any case only accounted for 14% of the figures you quoted.

Look at the figures from Alexa and Similarweb.

Now when is Mick going to learn that Banned means permanent and Suspended means temporary?
Click to expand...
When Xenforo gives that option. Xenforo gives you the option for a permanent or a temporary ban. There is no "suspend" option.


Has Mick figured out yet that Yost is not me?
Click to expand...
Unless you are arguing with yourself, and using a remote proxy, then it seems not. Xenforo has a quite sophisticated set of tool for detecting duplicate users, and you did not trip any of them. You IP's both start with 71, but are different geographically and geographically and ISPs.

Now I know exactly how much traffic my site gets, and I explain it all in the OP, and it can be verified via the independent SimilarWeb. Your insistence on sticking with wildly inaccurate figures here is not doing your case any favors.
 
Awww... don't be upset Mick. We know your site is mostly webcrawlers and repeat clicks from the same small group of users. In fact, many of the sections I have posted in have not seen so much activity prior to me posting.

But, whatever makes you feel better.

[Off topic material removed]
 
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SpaceCowboy said:
Awww... don't be upset Mick. We know your site is mostly webcrawlers and repeat clicks from the same small group of users. In fact, many of the sections I have posted in have not seen so much activity prior to me posting.

But, whatever makes you feel better.
Click to expand...

The repeat users are actually a very small part of my traffic, which is mostly from search and social. And see the Cloudflare numbers for the % of bots:


So you won't back down? Even when faced with all the evidence I showed you above? What exactly would it take for you to be convinced that Metabunk has 5,000+ unique visitors a day?

I'm not trying to feel better here. This is a simple factual error on your part. I'm just interested in if you prefer to continue to make an obviously wrong claim, or would ever admit a mistake?
 
Mick West said:
This is a simple factual error on your part. I'm just interested in if you prefer to continue to make an obviously wrong claim, or would ever admit a mistake?
Click to expand...

I'd wonder also if these posts are going to be copied and posted at P4T, as it was mentioned before that this was going on.
 
Mick, you claim to have 5000 unique visitors per day..... but yet have only 1300 some odd members.

Right there tells it all....
 
Mick West said:
The problem here seems to be the use of the web site urlmetrics (urlm.co), which appears to be an incredibly obscure web site ranker than almost nobody uses. I can't even find any references to it. The much more commonly used web sites are Alexa.com and Similarweb.com
Click to expand...

I´m using WOT (Web of Trust) - a browser-plugin that shows you the reputation of (not) trustworthing Websites before you click to them. WOT-users are getting a smal Icon behind every link to a Website that indicates in colors, how trustfull this website is. The Rankings by WOT are based on the opinion of the WOT-users, so they are not an "evidence" for "beeing bad" or "beeing good". but mostly, the WOT-Reputation is a good sign to seperate the good Sites from the ugly sites...

... and this is the WOT-Entry for URLM.CO (it´s red: "Warning"):



Source: https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/urlm.co?utm_source=addon&utm_content=popup-donuts

If you want to compare these User-Rankings of urlm.com with Alexa and Similarweb - Here you can find the WOT-scorecards for them (They are "green")

https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/alexa.com
https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/similarweb.com
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Mick, you claim to have 5000 unique visitors per day..... but yet have only 1300 some odd members.

Right there tells it all....
Click to expand...

As I explain above, and as you can tell from the figures you yourself quoted, the majority of my visitors are not members, but are "guests", usually visiting from search results, or social media (mostly Facebook)..
 
Mick West said:
As I explain above, and as you can tell from the figures you yourself quoted, the majority of my visitors are not members, but are "guests", usually visiting from search results, or social media (mostly Facebook)..
Click to expand...

Ok... if you say so.... but why do you think you only have 1308 members if you get 5000 unique visitors per day?
 
Technical aside, I suspect that urlm.co is incorrectly ranking metabunk.org because I force https. But I can't find any info at all about urlm or how they actually rank sites. Nobody seems to discuss them (except the negative reviews above).
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Ok... if you say so.... but why do you think you only have 1308 members if you get 5000 unique visitors per day?
Click to expand...

Because most people read, they don't write. You don't need to be a member for anything other than posting here. Some sites force you to register to view images and attachments, etc. People only register here if there want to post. I also have no spam registration, these are all real people.

So do you accept now that you were wrong, and I do actually have quite a bit more traffic than P4T?
 
Mick West said:
Because most people read, they don't write. You don't need to be a member for anything other than posting here. Some sites force you to register to view images and attachments, etc. People only register here if there want to post. I also have no spam registration, these are all real people.
Click to expand...

Not in my experience running a website and forum for more than 6 years, including a FB group for much less time... both of which have more members than you.

In short, people who are interested in content, will sign up, regardless if they wish to make a post. We have many on our forum and FB group who are members and haven't made a post in years. Then all of a sudden, they make a post 2....3....5 years after they registered.

So do you accept now that you were wrong, and I do actually have quite a bit more traffic than P4T?
Click to expand...

Whatever makes you feel better, but the truth says otherwise....

Why am I on mod preview Mick? Do you ever warn forum members? Or do you just run this forum like a dictator? Your forum members are starting to notice.. .they are emailing me.
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Not in my experience running a website and forum for more than 6 years, including a FB group for much less time... both of which have more members than you.

In short, people who are interested in content, will sign up, regardless if they wish to make a post. We have many on our forum and FB group who are members and haven't made a post in years. Then all of a sudden, they make a post 2....3....5 years after they registered.
Click to expand...
There's no benefit here to signing up, so people don't, unless they want to post.
Whatever makes you feel better, but the truth says otherwise....
Click to expand...
"Truth"? What about hard facts, like the Alexa ranking, or the similarweb comparison, or even the UK urlm comparison.

Why am I on mod preview Mick? Do you ever warn forum members? Or do you just run this forum like a dictator? Your forum members are starting to notice.. .they are emailing me.
Click to expand...
Because of your tendency to violate the posting guidelines.
 
Mick West said:
Because most people read, they don't write. You don't need to be a member for anything other than posting here.
Click to expand...


I´m reading here at least once a day and only log in if I have something to write. Because I´m thinking that my skills in writing in english are not optimal.

So you would find me as an "Senior Member" of Metabunk mostly in the "Guest"-List.
 
Mick West said:
There's no benefit here to signing up, so people don't, unless they want to post.
Click to expand...

Agreed. (well, as it pertains to "Metabunk". Other discussion forums prove your theory false.)

"Truth"? What about hard facts, like the Alexa ranking, or the similarweb comparison, or even the UK urlm comparison.
Click to expand...

So you still do not understand the difference between "Unique Visitor", "New Visitor" and "First Time Visitor"?

[...]
 
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SpaceCowboy said:
In short, people who are interested in content, will sign up, regardless if they wish to make a post
Click to expand...
that's just blatantly untrue of the general public. This is an information site, people come to learn.

yours is an entertainment site, people come to rant or voice an opinion. Big difference.
 
SpaceCowboy said:
Agreed. (well, as it pertains to "Metabunk". Other discussion forums prove your theory false.)
Click to expand...
Yet we are talking about Metabunk.

So you still do not understand the difference between "Unique Visitor", "New Visitor" and "First Time Visitor"?
Click to expand...

It varies by tracker. For Clicky.com, Unique means a unique visitor fingerprint, which is usually a cookie, but failing that an IP address. "New Visitor" is someone who has not visited before, which would be the same as a "first time visitor", as far as tracking is concerned.

If you disagree, then explain why.
 
Mick West said:
Yet we are talking about Metabunk.



It varies by tracker. For Clicky.com, Unique means a unique visitor fingerprint, which is usually a cookie, but failing that an IP address. "New Visitor" is someone who has not visited before, which would be the same as a "first time visitor", as far as tracking is concerned.


If you disagree, then explain why.
Click to expand...
Fascinating discussion but it is really over my head technically. I will say those people interested in any Forum are there for a variety of reasons but would say visiting Metabunk is an attempt to learn the other side of controversial issues. So as social media and web searches expand so will Metabunk. I would venture to say it will grow in proportion to the growth of controversial events and the opportunistic speculation that surrounds them. Simply, more and more people will be looking for the more rational explanations versus the more sensational.
 
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SpaceCowboy said:
Yes, I understand the concept. But anyone who understands forums across the net will notice that when members are shown as "Banned", that means permanent. When it says "Suspended" under their name, it means temporary.

Every forum from P4T to DebatePolitics to ATS to JREF.... the same. The list goes on...
Click to expand...

Do you actually do anything other than argue semantics? For any given site a term can mean whatever the host/owner deems it to mean. There is no effective difference between a suspension and a temporary ban.

As to topic, do the visitor numbers take into account members who frequently visit without logging in (like for instance me)?.
 
SpaceCowboy said:
In short, people who are interested in content, will sign up, regardless if they wish to make a post. We have many on our forum and FB group who are members and haven't made a post in years. Then all of a sudden, they make a post 2....3....5 years after they registered.
Click to expand...

Only if they are forced to sign up merely to view content in my experience. I only sign up somewhere if I intend to post, and from my experience of forums going back to the mid-90's I suspect that goes for many people. Otherwise the phrase "long time lurker first time poster" would not be seen as often as it is.
 
It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
Mick West said:
Now beside the fact that I'm a big fan of sourcing things, and I do use my real name, and only ban people for repeatedly violating the posting guidelines
Click to expand...
I've been looking around on here and an aweful lot of people who have differing views than Mick get banned. There's a ban in nearly every thread come to think of it. A lot of the "resident" fellows seem to post similar content to those who are banned, also violating the guidelines...but don't get banned. So it seems the guidelines are more of an opportunity for selective censorship. I suppose I might get banned for opining this...so I'm taking a screenshot of it to post on that "pilotsfor911truth" blog if I get memory-holed for holding this view :p
 
Libertarian said:
It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
I've been looking around on here and an aweful lot of people who have differing views than Mick get banned. There's a ban in nearly every thread come to think of it. A lot of the "resident" fellows seem to post similar content to those who are banned, also violating the guidelines...but don't get banned. So it seems the guidelines are more of an opportunity for selective censorship. I suppose I might get banned for opining this...so I'm taking a screenshot of it to post on that "pilotsfor911truth" blog if I get memory-holed for holding this view :p
Click to expand...

If you are on topic for a thread then it takes quite a lot to get banned - if your post is likely to be OT then you should start a NEW THREAD where your topic IS the topic - then you will not have your posts removed from view for being OT! :)
 
Libertarian said:
It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
I've been looking around on here and an aweful lot of people who have differing views than Mick get banned. There's a ban in nearly every thread come to think of it. A lot of the "resident" fellows seem to post similar content to those who are banned, also violating the guidelines...but don't get banned. So it seems the guidelines are more of an opportunity for selective censorship. I suppose I might get banned for opining this...so I'm taking a screenshot of it to post on that "pilotsfor911truth" blog if I get memory-holed for holding this view :p
Click to expand...
Most of the time they get banned for violation of the politeness policy but sometimes for repeatedly off-topic posts. Like your last one. Most bans are temporary.
 
Libertarian said:
It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
I've been looking around on here and an aweful lot of people who have differing views than Mick get banned.
Click to expand...

And if you continue looking around you'll find there are also plenty with differing views that don't get banned. It's also kind of a laughable accusation against metabunk given the very pro censorship/anti dissent attitudes of many pro conspiracy websites.
 
Libertarian said:
It also doesn't help that the owner stifles discussion by banning anyone who challenges their resident idiots. Clearly an amateur.
Content from External Source
I've been looking around on here and an aweful lot of people who have differing views than Mick get banned. There's a ban in nearly every thread come to think of it. A lot of the "resident" fellows seem to post similar content to those who are banned, also violating the guidelines...but don't get banned. So it seems the guidelines are more of an opportunity for selective censorship. I suppose I might get banned for opining this...so I'm taking a screenshot of it to post on that "pilotsfor911truth" blog if I get memory-holed for holding this view :p
Click to expand...

Notice neither Rob, or BlindIdiot (Yost) or yourself are banned. Simply disagreeing is not going to get you banned - it's violations of the posting guidelines.

It takes rather a lot to get banned here. I've also banned quite a few debunkers too, although generally not permanently.

But this thread is about the claims of traffic, not banning. Do you have anything to say about that?
 
Landru said:
Most of the time they get banned for violation of the politeness policy but sometimes for repeatedly off-topic posts. Like your last one. Most bans are temporary.
Click to expand...
This is a good example of the type of tit-for-tat stuff that I see in all of the threads. If you are aware that my post is off topic, than surely you are also aware that yours is also. But only I risk being banned, I think...Your off topic posts are above reproach, whereas mine are not.

Just to clarify though, I didn't think my post was off topic...I was quoting Mick's own post and making a relevant observation.

But anyhow, I'd rather not get the axe so I'll be shutting up now.
 
Well the proof is in the pudding, as we say. I haven't counted them but it looks like MB has far more interest/traffic/posts on the original subject than the P4T thread. :cool:
 
Libertarian said:
This is a good example of the type of tit-for-tat stuff that I see in all of the threads. If you are aware that my post is off topic, than surely you are also aware that yours is also. But only I risk being banned, I think...Your off topic posts are above reproach, whereas mine are not.
Click to expand...

All OT posts are likely to be removed including replies.

the banning is not for making an OT post - it is for repeatedly doing so and ignoring warnings to stop doing so.
 
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