BtP Statistics

Most Procoholic countries, 24 January 2009

On 24 January 2009 we affixed a counter to the 'What's New' page at 'Beyond the Pale' to collect the nationalities of visitors to that page over a 24-hour period. The supposition was that people visiting 'What's New' were habitual fans actively looking for the latest Procol updates, which we have been publishing daily since October 1997. If the counter had been on the 'home' page it might have picked up merely 'casual trade', sent thither by search engines and so forth.

In the table below you will find the countries concerned, their populations according to last year's estimates, and the number of people who visited the'What's New' page in one 24-hour cycle. The countries are ranked according to the proportion of the population who seem to be Procoholics: no surprise to find Denmark in the leading position! (The Danes maintained this position a whole year later: read here)

On the other hand, it is surprising to find Poland right at the bottom: the table should perhaps take a language factor into account (clearly denizens of the UK,  New Zealand, America, Canada and Australia are likely to feel more at home at BtP – which is published in English, of which they all speak a version – than the average visitor from Poland, Japan, Venezuela etc).

We should also perhaps adjust on economic / infrastructure grounds: for instance America has 223 million internet users, the UK 40.2 million, and Poland a mere 16 million at present. So there's quite a lot of work to be done to make such a table 'meaningful'! We hope nonetheless that it is not without a certain interest.

BtP nationality statistics a decade ago | The 2010 table | The 2011 table