RunTri: January 2012

Flotrack.org Web Analytics: Which Marathons Attracted the Most Visits?

The website flotrack.org is one of the primary destinations for those in search of real-time coverage of running races. We were curious: over the last 11 months, which would be the busiest web traffic day on flotrack.org; which marathon attracted the largest audience.

Of the major marathons, the peak event was the Boston Marathon in April, which brought 29,000 visitors to the site. Interestingly, the US Marathon Olympic Trials, a major event that nevertheless had far less publicity than Boston, was the third most popular on flotrack.org. New York was fourth. Chicago? it's not the spike in September; looks like only 15,000 visited the site to follow the Chicago marathon.

Monthly Web and Mobile Metrics: December 20, 2011 to January 20, 2012

Monthly Mobile-only Metrics: December 20, 2011 to January 20, 2012

11-Month Web and Mobile Metrics: December 20, 2011 to January 20, 2012 (embedded chart)

LinkedIn Web Analytics: Networking Benchmarks

Nearly 40 million US people visit www.linkedin.com at least once a month; the number approaches 100 million worldwide. Charts below highlight LinkedIn visitor trends in key areas: visitors, visits, page views, frequency, traffic sources, demographics and mobile user stats.

The first chart contains web+mobile data from multiple perspectives:

Monthly: the black bar above the area chart indicates most recent monthly visitors -- 39.7 million US, e.g.
Weekly: the bold data for people, visits and pageviews are for the most recent week
Annual: the area chart illustrates daily weekly visits over the last year
Monthly comparisons: the table below the area chart goes a level deeper into monthly stats, volume changes, mobile

How addicted to LinkedIn are its visitors? About 1/3 of visitors are regulars or 'addicts'.

Mobile User Stats

The 1,655,890 million represents weekly mobile visitors. Same notes as above describe the remaining traffic stats. (Monthly (39.7 million) in the top black bar is still for web and mobile total.)

Interesting to note the mix of mobile devices used to visit LinkedIn: Four out of five mobile visitors come via an iPhone or iPad; Android only 17%. Notable because Neilsen continues to report that Android is the leading mobile operating system, representing more than 1/3 of all mobile devices.

Embedded Live Data

MarathonGuide.com Web Analytics

In the last month, in the dead of winter, more than 150,000 runners visited MarathonGuide.com. Not a bad number, but RunnersWorld.com gets nearly that many visitors daily in the same time period.

Data for total and mobile-only visits are in analysis below; note that the area graphs display daily visitor data.

Scott-Sports.com Web Analytics

Scott USA makes great bikes, and their popularity is evident in strong web traffic numbers.

Bicycling.com Web Analytics

Competitor.com Web Analytics

Our latest analysis of Runner's World online web traffic indicated that about 137,000 people per day visited the site. Interestingly, www.competitor.com, the website of Competitor group, which owns Triathlete Magazine and others with a similar focus on endurance sports, is estimated to reach 135,000 visitors in a month. Again: www.runnersworld.com gets as many site visitors in a single day as www.competitor.com gets in a month. All data presented here is publicly available via guantcast.com.

RunnersWorld.com Web Analytics: 137,000 Daily Visitors

My marketing consulting firm WinSight focuses on web insights, analytics, initiatives and strategies, and we help great clients achieve extraordinary results. RunTri.com is, of course, a very part-time effort, but with 400,000 to 500,000 visitors per year, it serves as a Web Analytics lab for WinSight, allowing us to test leading web analytic tools and capabilities.

We work with a variety of companies in various industries. One client is a major media enterprise which attracts 1 million visitors a day. We thought it would be interesting to compare our client's web statistics with other major media, including www.runnersworld.com.

The results of our www.runnersworld.com website analytics, with data publicly available at www.quantcast.com, are fascinating.

RunnersWorld.com serves 1.4 million visitors monthly. But the more impressive stat is the nearly 137,000 people who visit the site each day. For perspective, that number exceeds the combined 120,000+ runners who finish the Boston, New York City, Chicago and Marine Corps marathons each year. And from another perspective, it takes www.competitor.com, which owns Triathlete Magazine and others, an entire month to equal RW's daily reach.

The numbers are impressive across the board: daily visits, via web or mobile devices, traffic sources and frequency, and global, state and city visitor activity. Dive in.

Here's the data, isolated for mobile only.

Data as of 1/18/12

Marathon Finish Times by Age: Boston, New York City, Chicago and Marine Corps Marathon

More than 120,000 runners plan to run a marathon in Boston, New York City, Chicago and or the Marine Corps Marathon this year. If you or a friend are running in one or more of these events, here are finish times you might expect, by age for women and men. How do the races compare? New York City marathoners will average 38 minutes slower than Boston runners; Chicago finishers average 50 minutes slower than Boston. Interestingly, Chicago and Marine Corps Marathons result in quite similar times across the board.

For more, see

US Olympic Marathon Trials Results: Houston 2012

Congratulations to Shalane Flanagan and Meb Keflzighi, winners of the 2012 US Olympics Marathon Trials in Houston.

US Olympic Women's Marathon Team: Houston 2012 Results
1 2:25:38 Shalane Flanagan
2 2:25:55 Desiree Davila (at right, Chicago 2010)
3 2:26:06 Kara Goucher

US Olympic Men's Marathon Team: Houston 2012 Results
1 2:09:08 Meb Keflezighi
2 2:09:30 Ryan Hall
3 2:09:47 Abdi Abdirahman

Compare these results to the top 3 2008 US Olympic Marathon Trials finishers.

US Olympic Women's Marathon Team: Boston 2008 Results
1 2:29:35 Deena Kastor
2 2:30:19 Magdalena Lewy Boulet
3 2:32:40 Blake Russell

US Olympic Men's Marathon Team: New York City 2008 Results
1 2:09:02 Ryan Hall
2 2:11:07 Dathan Ritzenhein
3 2:11:40 Brian Sell

Ryan Hall wins 2008 USA Olympic Marathon Trials. Image by Raymond Britt.

New Year's Resolution 2012: Run a Marathon or Triathlon

Just about everything you -- and the 1.7 million from all over the world who've visited the site in the last 3 years -- want to know is here.

By Raymond Britt

RunTri.com offers free advice for marathoners and triathletes: just about everything you need to know about training for and racing great marathons and Ironman triathlons, from Boston to Kona, and beyond.

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