How the Snow Contest has Grown

I was going through some of the stats for the Golden Snowball contest and found it interesting as to how it has grown over the last several years since Denis Brogan, the cities and the meteorologists decided to resurrect our snow contest. Below are some stats showing the visitors to the website since 2003 and it shows how the interest has grown over the years. Traffic has pretty much doubled each snow season as more and more people hear about the GSB contest and take interest in the contest and the weather and snow in New York State.

Most of the traffic increase is due to the media who spreads the word about our contest in NY through articles in the papers and online. All of the cities involved in it, Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Binghamton and Albany have has some kind of article about the contest throughout the years. Other media such at the New York Times, Paul Harvey, Saturday Night Live, the Weather Channel, USA Today and others have also brought national attention to the Golden Snowball contest. Local blogs from all of the cities in the contest have also brought attention to our great, fun contest that helps pass the colder months by a little faster. NYCO's blog at http://www.twentyfour01.com/nyco/ has something to say about the contest every now and then and I've read something about it on a Buffalo blog at http://buffalog.blogspot.com/ and several others. John F. Bonfatti from the The Buffalo News Weather Vein has written several articles about the contest. Sean Kirst from the Post Standard and Syracuse.com who along with several others who have some foresight as to what can and should be done with the snowy weather in Syracuse has written several articles about the Golden Snowball contest and how the city should be taking advantage of our snowy winters has been a big part in revising the contest and many others. Sean had a good article out not too long ago about Syracuse being the snowiest big city not just in the United States but last year in North America. Check it out at http://www.syracuse.com/articles/kirst/index.ssf?/base/business-11/1197453467227480.xml&coll=1

Anyways, below are some stats that show how the contest has grown over the last several years. It's not the traffic that the big boys get but for a regional contest it's not too shabby in my opinion. Whats it all mean??? Beats me as usual but I just thought I would share that the interest in our fun snow contest, yours and mine continues to grow and I have to think which city will be the first to have a carnival based on our snowy weather.

(The First Year the Website Started Keeping Stats)
Yearly Visitor Statistics for 2003

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Bandwidth
Jan 2003	0	0	0	0
Feb 2003	0	0	0	0
Mar 2003	0	0	0	0
Apr 2003	0	0	0	0
May 2003	0	0	0	0
Jun 2003	0	0	0	0
Jul 2003	0	0	0	0
Aug 2003	0	0	0	0
Sep 2003	0	0	0	0
Oct 2003	13	17	38	303.20 KB
Nov 2003	138	188	200	3.35 MB
Dec 2003	272	331	357	5.96 MB
Total	423	536	595	9.60 MB

2004 Yearly Website Stats

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Bandwidth
Jan 2004	939	1557	2057	2.20 GB
Feb 2004	1168	2253	2843	2.17 GB
Mar 2004	669	1531	1967	69.88 MB
Apr 2004	383	727	820	33.76 MB
May 2004	566	738	933	43.89 MB
Jun 2004	131	208	253	12.32 MB
Jul 2004	147	216	261	10.35 MB
Aug 2004	116	181	207	8.66 MB
Sep 2004	146	216	249	10.58 MB
Oct 2004	153	267	1102	12.97 MB
Nov 2004	269	531	2395	37.35 MB
Dec 2004	424	917	2404	62.45 MB
Total	5111	9342	15491	4.66 GB

2005 Goldensnowball.com Website Statistics

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2005	1322	3104	10128	76866	667.63 MB
Feb 2005	822	2320	11010	77915	557.88 MB
Mar 2005	1240	3087	11275	91264	766.71 MB
Apr 2005	569	1069	3054	22844	232.36 MB
May 2005	1124	1467	8666	86843	451.79 MB
Jun 2005	393	510	1584	25353	112.86 MB
Jul 2005	378	510	1153	23025	91.94 MB
Aug 2005	450	591	2457	28145	140.02 MB
Sep 2005	471	659	2260	34869	149.88 MB
Oct 2005	442	862	5485	67212	221.81 MB
Nov 2005	687	1624	12060	154452	582.61 MB
Dec 2005	1299	3757	22746	360495	2.44 GB
Total	9197	19560	91878	1049283	6.32 GB

2006 Yearly Visitors

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Bandwidth
Jan 2006	3549	7581	23776	1.69 GB
Feb 2006	2377	5399	27387	2.94 GB
Mar 2006	2114	4979	24816	1.98 GB
Apr 2006	1035	2263	10138	777.52 MB
May 2006	2931	3860	14570	3.28 GB
Jun 2006	812	1446	6001	606.22 MB
Jul 2006	746	1091	5249	484.68 MB
Aug 2006	999	1672	8114	612.82 MB
Sep 2006	1549	2557	11424	847.65 MB
Oct 2006	2617	4113	20580	1.80 GB
Nov 2006	2169	3789	18940	1.51 GB
Dec 2006	2878	5377	21577	1.70 GB
Total	23776	44127	192572	18.15 GB

Last Year - 2007 Visitor Stats
(Over a quarter of a million page views

and closing in on 50,000 yearly unique visitors)

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Bandwidth
Jan 2007	3702	8312	27551	2.07 GB
Feb 2007	11085	21876	52713	11.21 GB
Mar 2007	4332	10963	23767	2.67 GB
Apr 2007	2872	7531	18872	1.25 GB
May 2007	1942	4337	13067	1.49 GB
Jun 2007	1165	3009	6244	1.12 GB
Jul 2007	1144	2808	5265	919.43 MB
Aug 2007	1297	3085	6058	1.11 GB
Sep 2007	1444	3251	5671	677.96 MB
Oct 2007	1925	4542	7959	1.04 GB
Nov 2007	3613	7677	22139	1.68 GB
Dec 2007	7851	18408	43583	4.28 GB
Total	42372	95799	232889	29.48 GB

Visitors for 2008

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Bandwidth
Jan 2008	1106	1689	3810	421.96 MB
Feb 2008	0	0	0	0
Mar 2008	0	0	0	0
Apr 2008	0	0	0	0
May 2008	0	0	0	0
Jun 2008	0	0	0	0
Jul 2008	0	0	0	0
Aug 2008	0	0	0	0
Sep 2008	0	0	0	0
Oct 2008	0	0	0	0
Nov 2008	0	0	0	0
Dec 2008	0	0	0	0
Total	1106	1689	3810	421.96 MB

Have a great day everyone and try to stay warm. Warmer weather is in the forecast.