Number of hits

This page documents the number of hits this site received from its beginning to about 2004.
First, a table of hits up to 1999:

Total number of hits up to June 1999: over 7 million!

Up to July 1999, the website was stored on the server of the Department of Computer Science, Utrecht University. In August 1999, the files were transferred to our new location at www.chessvariants.com.

This totals the number of files downloaded: HTML-, GIF-, JPG-, program- and font-files. Actually, the numbers are a little imprecise: they include some (but not all) of the hits to my other WWW pages, e.g., those on origami or on my scientific research, but exclude a few of the hits to the chess variant pages (before September 1998). Overall, the numbers come close to being accurate.

There are a few notable moments where the number of hits increased, some having a clear explanation: the increase in the fall of 1995 was partly due to a heavier use of graphics, thus the downloading of a text on a variant gave multiple hits instead of one. In February 1996, the page was mentioned on the list of links on the site of the first Kasparov - Deep Blue match: this explains the larger number of hits in that month. In the fall of 1996, the page was mentioned on a number of places, which may explain the increase then. The increase in November 1996 is partly due to my mentioning of the pages on the font and the rules of chess on Yahoo. May 1997 was the time of the second Kasparov - Deep Blue match, and I guess more surfers were out for chess related files than in other months. In June 1997, the hits stabilized at a 5000 per day. November 1997 shows a smaller number of hits due to a server crash. In January 1998, it seems that the hits went up to around 7000 per day, with a further increase in the end of 1998 and beginning of 1999 till about 12000 per day.

Beginning August 1999, we moved to chessvariants.com.

Above, you see the number of hits to the chessvariants.com location, to the old location, the sum of these two numbers, and the number of page-views (amount of webpages that were looked at). The hits to the old site include hits to my other webpages, and pages that were viewed but automatically forwarded the reader to the chessvariants.com website. Starting January 2000, we only count hits to chessvariants.com, as hits to the old site are mainly either hits to different webpages or redirections to the new site now.

Month	Year	Hits chessvariants.com	Pageviews chessvariants.com
January	2000	383,868	91,194
February	2000	358,238	81,322
March	2000	405,542	90,034
April	2000	399,141	98,904
May	2000	494,938	111,875
June	2000	411,964	80,821
July	2000	528,460	109,564
August	2000	554,058	110,336
September	2000	583,144	116,718
October	2000	563,565	146,658
November	2000	737,425	176,061
December	2000	738,295	144,035
January	2001	756,423	145,221
February	2001	648,853	140,192
March	2001	732,021	141,481
April	2001	699,322	145,764
May	2001	698,744	143,630
June	2001	716,227	147,650
July	2001	834,053	187,796
August	2001	880,076	210,479
September	2001	892,962	180,227
October	2001	1,171,323	243,116
November	2001	1,177,720	174,893
December	2001	1,150,829	177,358

In October 2000, due to the fact that the site moved to a different server, a day or five are missing from the statistics, so the real numbers for October 2000 are a little higher. Some of the increase in fall 2002 may be due to a more intensive indexing of the website by some search engines.

Month	Year	Hits chessvariants.com	Pageviews chessvariants.com	Visits chessvariants.com
January	2002	1,677,349	358,435	53125
February	2002	1,411,889	225,532	52793
March	2002	1,790,346	227,858	59567
April	2002	1,748,271	188,715	61994
May	2002	1,936,906	201,298	70779
June	2002	1,292,466	135,927	47142
July	2002	1,603,039	171,983	56223
August	2002	1,425,618	138,300	41694
September	2002	1,953,484	212,731	65175
October	2002	2,021,241	225,400	66165
November	2002	2,116,677	212,906	70798
December	2002	2,460,571	262,961	83128
January	2003	2,643,151	274,092	88596
February	2003	2,823,655	761,554	73904
March	2003	144,146	34,513	4218
April	2003	2,991,522	827,303	84357
May	2003	2,404,395	230,814	90691
June	2003	2,439,990	233,002	81458
July	2003	2,556,436	225,097	80848
August	2003	2,413,806	211,416	76667
September	2003	2,748,229	229,038	87856
October	2003	3,723,409	255,106	93751
November	2003	3,490,815	266,836	99916
December	2003	3,249,238	266,763	99546
January	2004	273,847	21,079	9162
February	2004	3,376,162	243,760	90675
March	2004	3,702,370	266,135	99644
April	2004	3,950,052	267,988	96240
May	2004	3,304,152	236,876	89872

In January 2002, about 300,000 hits were caused by one search engine that downloaded much of the site. June 2002 had fewer hits, which partially is due to server problems, which also appeared July 2002. August 2002 had 8 days of statistics missing; March 2003 29 days, January 2004 28 days. It is not clear what the large numbers in pageviews in February and April 2003 mean: it might be a different way of counting things by the system. Many hits in October 2003 were due to a visit of a search engine.

The total of all hits up to end May 2004 is over 94 million, the number of visits (counted starting January 2001) up to May 2004 is over 2.5 million, and the number of pageviews up to end of May 2004 is over 11 million.