Silent Traffic is Still Traffic - but how about a bit of noise!

Many of the top Economics’ Blogs have very active comment pages from their readers, mostly chatting sense reasonably close to the Blog’s posts. The top Blogs, at least in economics, are located in the US, mainly in academe, and while many are the students of the faculty providing the Blogs, at least at the beginning of term, or semester, the majority over the year are fellow professional economists, with a fair sprinkling of non-economists (judging by their contributions).

I refer to Blogs, among those I read every day, by Greg Mankiw (how does he pronounce his name – talking about him the other week, I was pulled up for saying ‘mankev’ as in ‘Kevin’; my puller-up said it was pronounced ‘mankew’ as in Kew Gardens); Brad Delong, Frank Stephenson and Craig Depken of Division of Labour; Truck and Barter; Mark Thoma at Economists’s View; Russell Roberts and Don Boudreaux at Café Hayek; Organisations and Markets; William J. Poley; Peter Boettek at Austrian economists; Canadian Economists; Worthwhile Canadian Initiative; and two sites that list, as they happen, whatever is posted on economics blogs around the world, namely, Economics Roundtable and blognetbiz/econ. In Europe we have Tim Worstall (Portugal) and Stumbling and Mumbling, and, of course, the ever popular Adam Smith Institute blog. Among these, are the ‘big guns’ of the economics profession.

In this world, Lost Legacy is a small player. Its focus is on Adam Smith and his work, and not on whatever catches the attention of economists generally, means that it ploughs a narrow furrow, though not an uncontroversial one on occasion, and it appeals to specialist scholars in the history of economics thought, and those economists who think deeply about the source of ideas (and policies).

There appears from these data to be a steady and regular readership, some few of whom write to me privately( some extracts or themes from them I take up here); a very, very small number take the time to post in the comments section, which sometimes worries me – am I writing for myself?).

However, there has been a steady upwards trend too in visits to the Lost legacy site. This past week Lost Legacy has scored its best results so far since it started in March 2005.

So, therefore, many readers find Lost Legacy interesting and useful and silently enjoy what they read each day. If this volume of traffic stokes up and maintains interest in the authentic Adam Smith, then all well and good, and if it clears up misinformation about his work, it is even better.

I have data for traffic through Lost legacy showing that for seven days to 29 November and 4,773 visits were made (including people who visited Lost Legacy more than once per day) and a total of 2,691 ‘unique visitors’ (only counting a first visit).

On Wednesdaty 29th, for example, there was 422 ‘unique’ visitors, who viewed on that day 1,597 ‘pages’. The total of pages viewed for the week was 11,052, the largest number of page views since we started.

Now if we get more of you to post a comment, that would be another record…