MORAY’S COMMUNITY NEWS service has recorded a stunning start to the new year – including recording its first ever 10,000-plus readership figures for a single story.
Statistics for the first month of the year show that 73,241 distinct internet hosts connected to our website – a stunning increase of 17% over the highest monthly figure recorded in 2015.
Over 1.5million pages were read on the site throughout January – almost half a million of these in a single week between January 17 and 24, when the site was at the forefront of reporting on several major issues in Moray, including the Council Tax increase and plans to establish ship-to-ship oil transfers on the Moray Firth.
It was, however, the story of a Buckie woman who had been caught on film appearing to vandalise several cars that drew over 10,000 readers to a single story for the first time, while eight more news items drew in between 5000 and 6000 readers each.
Site editor Stuart Crowther said: “We started recording accurate statistics on the site when we moved to a new server in May last year – and have been astonished at the growth in the site since then.
“Our June monthly readership figure grew to 45,735 hosts served – a host is a unique internet protocol address requesting pages from the site. From there it has just grown month on month until reaching January’s stunning 73,241.
“This is being reflected by the figures on our accompanying Facebook social media page, where we have seen a rapid increase in followers to well over 13,000, with our post daily ‘reach’ hitting just under the 100,000 mark in recent weeks.
“I am obviously pleased that our service is hitting the right notes in every corner of Moray as well as providing a valuable service to ex-pat Morayvians around the world.”