Thursday, June 30, 2011

Why Is NEHTA Wasting Money Sponsoring Rather Poorly Used Blogs and Other Such Sites?

As a bit of a stir after a pretty dismal financial year, I was wondering the other day just how the blog was comparing in visitor traffic with others in the Australian Health IT space - especially the NEHTA sponsored ones - listed as the top two in this list. It seems the two they are sponsoring are the least used and least popular.

Alexa provides a way to get an independent assessment.

The Australian E-Health Blog space has a range of contributors.

Other than this blog we have the following:

http://ehealthcentral.com.au

Site Information for ehealthcentral.com.au

  • Alexa Traffic Rank: 9,107,915
  • No regional data
  • Sites Linking In: 7

http://ehealthspace.org/

Site Information for ehealthspace.org

  • Alexa Traffic Rank: 8,504,985
  • No regional data
  • Sites Linking In: 7

http://blog.healthbase.info/

Site Information for healthbase.info

http://www.healthintersections.com.au/

Site Information for healthintersections.com.au

  • Alexa Traffic Rank: 5,025,895
  • No regional data
  • Sites Linking In: 1

This is to be compared with AusHealthIT.

www.aushealthit.blogspot.com

Site Information for aushealthit.blogspot.com

  • Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,041,342
  • Traffic Rank in US: 675,544
  • Sites Linking In: 44

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to suggest just why this difference may exist. It does rather seem having an independent view is apparently important!

Maybe is it a lack of readers that leads to frustration and those personal attacks for which at least one blog has become quite boring with?

I also find it amazing that the situation for Nehta.gov is as follows:

Site Information for nehta.gov.au

  • Alexa Traffic Rank: 2,208,914
  • Traffic Rank in AU: 68,808
  • Sites Linking In: 64

Only half the site traffic of AusHealthIT? I suspect the figure but that’s what Alexa says. Is this why so few clinicians seem to be aware of the PCEHR I wonder?

Statistics were obtained from www.Alexa.com on June 30, 2011. If I have missed your blog let me know!

Enjoy.

David

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6 comments:

  1. JonnoJuly 01, 2011 10:50 AM

    David, I think it's probably because your site is hosted in the US and blogspot.com has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 5 and a US Traffic Rank of 7.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr David G More MB PhDJuly 01, 2011 10:54 AM

    Nope - the report is on the specific full URL as you see in the blog. Being millionth is different from being in top 10!

    David.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JonnoJuly 01, 2011 11:04 AM

    I'm not questioning the rankings I just thought that the popularity of blogspot.com might have something to do with your higher rank ie people who searched for health IT blogs on blogspot.com would probably find your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dr David G More MB PhDJuly 01, 2011 11:11 AM

    Might be - but you can't actually go to blogspot.com - people search via Google, Bing or whatever.

    Only about 15% of visits come from search - most are direct or RSS.

    David.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JonnoJuly 01, 2011 11:22 AM

    Seems like you're doing well then.

    But if your site has had only 305,029 total pageviews since March 2010 as it says on the left then those other sites you've mentioned above mustn't be doing very well at all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Grahame GrieveJuly 01, 2011 10:32 PM

    Hi

    Thanks for putting me in the list, David, though I don't think I belong. But I feel that I do need to point out that my blog is not a NEHTA sponsored one, nor is it blessed by NEHTA at all (though I do consult to them some of the time).

    How does this Alexa decide this stuff anyway? Is it some government sponsored eavesdropping service or something? I bet it's a small and unreliable sample size based on processing squid server logs.

    ReplyDelete