back to article Reading this headline? You and 9.47 million others

It's January again: and that means it's time for our annual letter from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, telling us Vultures how we did in our regular November audit of site traffic last year. Without further ado, the scores on the doors: 9,470,181 unique users paid a visit that month, up from 7,326,907 in 2012. That's a climb …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Cawing of the Vultures heard by more IT pros than ever before

    Pro's? Have you read some of the comments....

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Coat

      Re: Cawing of the Vultures heard by more IT pros than ever before

      Clearly. Some even misuse apostrophes.

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Cawing of the Vultures heard by more IT pros than ever before

      First off, hat off yet again to El Reg.

      As for commentards, I sensed more a dip in S/N ratio. Now that some of the N has gone, S has improved so cheers all around!

  2. DAN*tastik
    Meh

    Dear Reg reader, we know you like to feel special...

    Yeah. Sorry, you ain't.

    There are 10 millions of other ones just like you. So there.

    Yours Team Register.

  3. Martipar

    Congratularation!

    All the base are belong to you, hail all RegEl conquereror of planets!

  4. frank ly
    Happy

    I've got a botnet that could boost those figures

    Contact me for pricing details.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Plenty of Apple headlines will keep the figures up ;)

  6. Andrew Moore

    I remember The Reg back when it was cool...

    1. fishman

      I remember the Reg when it was sent as an email every two weeks.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well done you...

    .... although I was momentarily surprised when I glanced at the URL for this story before I read the headline which appeared to claim you have nearly a billion readers!

  8. stu 4

    it's still cool

    I reckon there is an international media conspiracy to keep El Reg's fame out of the other press... probably by the lizard people.

    it's the only explanation.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Uniques?

    I'm sure I'm not alone and can probably claim 3 of those unique IP addresses:

    Office (only on breaks you know)

    Phone over 3/4G on my commute

    Home

    They all have separate service providers and separate IP Address ranges, which means I'm here three times as much as you think I am.

    1. Caff

      ditto - ( they made tapes didn't they? )

      At least 3 ip's

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Devil

      Re: Uniques?

      That just makes you extra unique.

      Every reader truly is a special snowflake...

    3. DaLo

      Re: Uniques?

      We don't use Unique visitors any more as they it is so inaccurate nowadays.

      It used to be that Proxies and NATing would mean your Unique Visitors was under rated. So cookies came in to do tracking however this over reported as they were cleared down and lots of browsing being done in private mode.

      Now though multi device makes all stats of unique visitors pointless as a track of audience levels other than as a relative figure. There are so many web consuming devices, phones, tablets, PCs at home and work etc that I'm sure most Unique Visitors numbers can be cut by half if not a third.

      Year on year growth is also affected by worldwide (or key market) smartphone and tablet growth - if that grows by 30% then it is likely that your unique visitor count will grow by a similar amount.

  10. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Earthbound

    > though there's a good chance of finding a Reg reader almost anywhere there's any IT, including the South Pole

    So nobody on the ISS then? Shame.

    1. fedoraman

      Re: Earthbound

      Actually, that's a rather interesting question - has our beloved Reg ever been read from aboard ISS? I think we should be told!

  11. pop_corn

    > "our dull, old-fashioned practice of turning a profit"

    And a healthy profit it seems to be, with £1.1M cash in the bank and net assets of £1.9M. Congrats!

    https://www.duedil.com/company/03403653/situation-publishing-limited

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Pint

      It's about time they shared some of this lovely cash with the users then. After all, without us there wouldn't be any lovely moolah.

      Oi! El Reg! When's the party?

      1. Steve Knox
        Holmes

        Keep your hat on

        It's about time they shared some of this lovely cash with the users then.

        At 1.9m in net assets and 9.47m users, 20p per user would bankrupt them.

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

          Grumpy Old Grump

          All very nice to have all that lolly sloshing around.

          But apparently they still can't afford to employ someone to set up the snowy Christmas banner (three years in a row!) {humpf}

    2. Avatar of They
      Happy

      That explains it then.

      How they can afford all the lego re-enactments, and the flights into space must set them back a fair bit.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That explains it then.

        The Reg turns a profit??!! I thought that it was a charity, providing somewhere for aging tech hacks to continue their addictions.... :)

  12. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Systeme Register units

    Furhter to your bootnote about the Register's much loved eccentric measurements, have you considered the Binary Mile? this would be 65536 inches, as against the traditional 63360 inches. The New Furlong would become 8192 inches.

    A further adjustment, for neatness, would fix the New Inch at 25 millimetres exactly. This would bring the new Binary Mile a little nearer the old mile.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Systeme Register units

      "Furhter to your bootnote"

      For a short moment[1] there I thought you had self-Godwined in the very first word of your post!

      [1] I was just wondering what the reg base time unit was and realised I didn't know. So I checked The Official RI Guide and we appear to be missing an official Reg Unit for time. This means I have no way of calculating the rate of consumption of my nightly Bulgarian funbag worth of beer.

      I think we need a new forum topic for this matter followed by a vote.

  13. Roger Greenwood

    "pretty much all the IT people in the land and then some"

    or about half the IT people in the land over 3 or 4 different devices.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: "pretty much all the IT people in the land and then some"

      Not to mention different browsers on each device, along with various tracker blocking mechanisms (probably more likely to be used by IT folks than non-IT).

    2. phuzz Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: "pretty much all the IT people in the land and then some"

      I've occasionally met people in IT who don't read el Reg. I never trusted those people.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "pretty much all the IT people in the land and then some"

        What about those of us who don't work in IT (anymore?)

        Anonymous 'cause, well... I ain't stupid...

  14. lglethal Silver badge
    Pint

    A third of the suns visits?

    Yeah, but take out the visits to the Page 3 girl and you probably have triple their actual visits!

    Well done El Reg. Have a pint! -->

  15. TitterYeNot

    Will it blend?

    "how many Olympic swimming pools the Register readership could fill"

    Wouldn't we need to be liquefied for that unit of measurement to be appropriate? Should we be worried?

    1. Vulch
      Pint

      Re: Will it blend?

      Or all be standing around the edge of the pools after lunch on Friday...

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Will it blend?

      If you removed all the intestines of all the Register readership, how far would they stretch? That's the figure we want to know. As if they've worked it out, we know to get round their offices sharpish, and burn them down.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Will it blend?

        I thought that the El Reg readership was mainly made up from spineless, gutless IT geeks..... Those intestines would not stretch very far.....

        ( Of course, I myself am not included in aformentioned stereotyping........)

        1. Dezweb52

          Re: Will it blend?

          Sorry, but had to do the calculations on this one and I worked out that if you took all the intestines at 25 feet each from all the readers they would go around the world nearly 180 times. Of course, I'm happy to be corrected, but no actual demos please! ;)

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
            Happy

            Re: Will it blend?

            That's good work. How many sausages does that make?

  16. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    We sometimes wonder why we aren't more often mentioned

    I suspect it's to do with the language on here. I'm guessing it's not the sort of stuff the mainstream media wants to be associated with.

    1. Alan 6

      The Grauniad isn't bothered by bad language, two stories on the front page of their site yesterday had f-words in the first couple of paragraphs

      1. Michael Hawkes

        It's not what you think

        IMHO, they're more frightened by words like hexadecimal and sysadmin.

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: It's not what you think

          Basically there isn't enough bad language for us to rate the mainstream meeja.

  17. psychonaut

    Yeah well fuck the mainstream media

    1. Chika

      Why bother? They seem to do a good job at fucking themselves.

  18. Anonymous IV
    Thumb Up

    Smarm

    Aren't we supposed to post a collective Thank You to all the El Reg hacks who work ceaselessly, day and night, to provide limpid and often-(readable & typo-free) articles for our viewing pleasure and for us to squabble over? Well done, chaps and ms-chaps (if available)!

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Smarm

      Nope, they should be thanking us, otherwise their writings would be just relegated to the level of spacedust within the time continuum.

    2. Trainee grumpy old ****

      Re: Smarm

      One reason I regularly read the Register is for the (generally) insightful and / or amusing comments provided by many of the regular commentards.

      Tldr: It's the commentards wot makes El Reg so interesting.

  19. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    And 11% of visits were Eadon knocking Microsoft

    It's a joke, ok?

    1. Jay_x386
      Trollface

      Re: And 11% of visits were Eadon knocking Microsoft

      Eadon.... those were the days

      or

      THOSE WERE THE DAYS

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: And 11% of visits were Eadon knocking Microsoft

        "Eadon.... those were the days

        or

        THOSE WERE THE DAYS"

        More like: "THOSE WERE THE DAYS _ MICROSOFT EPIC NOSTALGIA FAIL!!!:"

  20. deadlockvictim

    el Reg» el Reg has around a third as much clout as The Sun

    Maybe a few more salacious pictures of motherboards and daughterboards as well as their silicon enhancements and some pin-outs to boot and we'll catch up with el Sol.

    Oooh, just thinking about transistor layouts on ARM chips makes me weak at the knees.

    1. Lyndon Hills 1

      Not bad

      for a Lesbian online magazine

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/indy_reg/

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Maybe a few more salacious pictures...

      You mean this wasn't enough?

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/ventblockers_2/

      (Insatiable, some people!)

  21. Lars Silver badge
    Pint

    unique users

    Should of course read 9,470,181 unique browsers (like in the stat). We all know some use several (unique) browsers, finding the number of unique users is simply not doable. The point, however, is "That's a climb of just over 29 per cent and now the third record-high figure in a row.".

    Congratulations for that and for El Reg for what you are.

    It would be fun to see stats for browsers and operating systems too but I suppose ABC does not do that.

    Looking at the Geo IP analysis some 25% of the readers probably have some other native tongue but English.

    So while ElReg!comments!Pierre is spot on, I sometimes find that "colour/color" agony rather unnecessary.

    The English language is in fact quite a "garbage collector", "In addition to its Anglo-Saxon and Norman French roots, a significant number of English words are constructed on the basis of roots from Latin.

    I feel great sympathy with young kids who have to learn a language void of any logic between spelling and pronouncing. But I do like it.

    1. Spoonsinger

      Re: unique users

      Re :- "I feel great sympathy with young kids who have to learn a language void of any logic between spelling and pronouncing. But I do like it."

      "Young kids" who learn it's foibles don't seem to have a problem, even if the context might not be tight. But that adds to the fun and the misinterpretations which gives a comedic value to a conversation and a flexibility which other languages just don't have in the grand scale.

      1. Jonathan Richards 1
        Headmaster

        Muphry strikes

        > "Young kids" who learn it's foibles don't seem to have a problem

        That should, of course, read '"Young kids" who learn its foibles don't seem to have a problem', since one of its foibles is the apostrophe in it's. It's not a genitive, it's an elision for "it is". It has a genitive case: it's its.

        :)

        1. Spoonsinger

          Re: Muphry strikes

          "read '"Young kids" who learn its foibles" - wasn't me.

      2. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: unique users

        Pleas, don't take me too seriously. Still I wonder if the sentence "how do you spell" appears as often in any other language. Do you find another potatoe Bush anywhere else. Looking for that sentence (on Google) give you 106 000 000 hits. Among other "bigger" languages you get for "wie schreibt man" 6 380 000 for "comment voulez-vous épeler" 1 860 and for "¿cómo se escribe" 16 800 000. Now, as there must be more English on the internet, it proves nothing and makes no difference "in the grand scale". But if you knew other languages well you would not write "But that adds to the fun and the misinterpretations which gives a comedic value to a conversation and a flexibility which other languages just don't have in the grand scale".

        Regards Lars

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: unique users

          Still I wonder if the sentence "how do you spell" appears as often in any other language

          English orthography is troublesome, but I've heard plenty of people complain other languages are worse in one way or another. Consider Japanese: with a great many homonyms, and many kanji sharing pronunciations, it's common for native speakers to ask one another how their names are written, for example.

          But if you knew other languages well you would not write "But that adds to the fun and the misinterpretations which gives a comedic value to a conversation and a flexibility which other languages just don't have in the grand scale".

          That doesn't follow. Someone can be well-aware of English's difficulties and still enjoy the language, and English orthography and pronunciation do make it more flexible in a number of respects, such as constructing partial/slant rhymes and other sorts of wordplay.

          1. Lars Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: unique users

            I was referring to "other" in "a flexibility which other languages just don't have in the grand scale" which is a silly thing to say unless you know many other languages well, and if you did you would hardly say it.

  22. Vociferous

    Do vultures actually caw?

    Turkey vulture have a call which sounds like fabric being ripped, California condor sounds like an elderly chain smoker clearing his throat, and Black vulture makes a sound which can best be described as "cat sneezing".

  23. Mark 85
    Thumb Up

    Well Done, El Reg

    So what if the mainstream ignores us. Makes El Reg a very well read underground pub. Congrats and pint to the staff and readership. For the mainstream media... they get squat.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Well Done, El Reg .. and all is bound to get better as intelligence visits and has a vested interest

      So what if the mainstream ignores us. Makes El Reg a very well read underground pub. Congrats and pint to the staff and readership. For the mainstream media... they get squat. …. Mark 85 Posted Wednesday 22nd January 2014 18:52 GMT

      Please be assured and/or terrified to know, Mark 85, that the mainstream in stealthy intelligence servering fields are not ignoring El Reg.

      And the evidence be the quiet visits of a certain type of concerned and discombobulated agency to systems admins sharing wares and beta testing programs and protocols suspected of really revolutionary capacity and facility with the global IT diaspora choosing to wander around and wonder at the news and views on El Reg displays.

      And one does get a better class of mole/troll/commentard on El Reg by virtue of all of that.

      Nothing is ever as it seems whenever reality is easily virtualised and extraordinarily rendered in MkUltraHiDefinition to that and/or those with a ….. well, Real Need to Virtually Know is all that one probably needs to know. And in IT worlds is that the default case always even more so.

  24. Sanctimonious Prick

    (titled)

    I was an irregular reader for some time, but as my local (au) hangouts have either disappeared (ABC), or just got plain boring (WP), I've become a 20 times a day visitor, on my i-things, my wintel things, from work, from home, from g/f's place, from school.

    I like the majority of articles here. Dead-Set hate the headline titles on the home page. Love the writing style of your contributors. And then there's the commentards - fuck, man, that's pretty much the best part :D

  25. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Coat

    I take issue with ElReg Numbers!

    "el Reg has around a third as much clout as The Sun,"

    You simply cannot equate the number of ElReg readers to the number of Sun website readers when referring to "clout" or influence. Quality matters so maybe you ought to be comparing the sum of reader IQs to get a better comparison of "clout".

    Those numbers would scare the beejeezus out one or both groups of readers!

  26. Parash2

    Real Location

    My profile states that I am in Australia, however my VPN puts me in London. For the purpose of the stats where does the Reg list me?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All those readers

    Yet still not one Apple user that gets a joke.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Windows

      Re: All those readers

      Any user who self-identifies by their choice of OS is unlikely to get a joke.

  28. Deadly Headshot

    Other Reg Sites

    Do the stats include RegHardware and ChannelReg - both separate sites?

  29. JLV
    Pint

    Eureka!

    Those viewer counts explain why you folks are getting those LightInTheBox lingerie ads we've been seeing those last couple of weeks.

    Well done, sirs, well done!

This topic is closed for new posts.