Saturday, November 12, 2022

At last the pretence is stripped away - Wings Over Scotland reveals its true readership numbers, which average less than 60,000 per month or around 1% of the population, far less than previously implied

Well, never let it be said that politely challenging some of the more outlandish propaganda on Wings Over Scotland fails to elicit any results. Stuart Campbell was so furious about my previous post that it took only an hour or two for a trademark rant/meltdown to appear, and it actually includes a limited glimpse of some of his private stats for traffic to Wings, which as I suspected bear no resemblance to the impression he's been trying to give us for years of hundreds of thousands of people hanging on his every word on a daily basis. 

Ignore the bluster about SimilarWeb "understating" the number of visits to Wings, because as I pointed out, "visits" are including the same people over and over again in the same month. The key figure is the number of unique visitors, which shows an average of just 58,747 people visiting Wings per month between January and June of this year. I say "just", because those are obviously extremely healthy numbers by any normal political blogging standards - it's simply that they fall well short of the boasts.  A few weeks ago, Stuart was not only claiming that he had the most popular pro-independence website, but that it was slightly more popular than all of the other leading sites combined - which he painted as an unmitigated disaster for the Yes-supporting New Media, because it would mean the only site that is really visited is one that is "closed" (ahem).  I can now say with confidence that the second claim was untrue (the other leading sites in combination almost certainly exceed Wings by some distance), and I'm not even totally convinced about the first.  I wouldn't wholly rule out the possibility that either Craig Murray or Wee Ginger Dug average more than 60,000 unique visitors per month - they probably don't, but they may not be a ridiculously long way behind.

Scot Goes Pop itself has actually been in that ballpark at times - during particularly busy periods like elections and referendums, it has occasionally exceeded 40,000 unique visitors in individual months, especially between around 2015 and 2017.  In recent months, leaving aside August which was an extreme outlier on the low side, 10-15,000 per month has been typical (which is actually a significant dip on the average figures for 2021 - I have various theories about the reasons for that slippage).  So, again, as I suspected, the claims repeatedly made by Stuart have given a significantly false impression - Wings seems to currently have approximately five times as many readers as Scot Goes Pop, not ten or twelve times.  I would guess that Stuart may have also overstated the disparity between Wings and other middle-ranking sites such as Bella Caledonia and Believe in Scotland by similar degrees.

To try to make these numbers more meaningful, the average monthly readership of Wings equates to just over 1% of the population of Scotland.  However, in practice this means that the site almost certainly reaches less than 1%, because a significant portion of readers are sure to be based outwith Scotland.  And remember that many people will just be casual visitors who drop by maybe once, twice, or three times a month.  The true core of committed readers is bound to be much lower - I can only speculate, but let's say it might plausibly be around 0.1% of the Scottish population. That tells us a lot about why the "Wings Party" idea proved to be such a non-starter.  You might remember that Campbell was at one point dazzling his disciples with fantastical projections about how easy it would be for a Wings Party to take 10-20% of the Holyrood list vote, because the Wings website supposedly already had that kind of reach into the general population.  Simply not true.  Anecdotally, I do find that a lot of ordinary people are aware of the existence of Wings, but in terms of actual regular readers, it's much more of a 'cult' pursuit.  (I use that word in the sense that it's typically used about TV shows or films with a very passionate niche audience.)

Lastly, could I just thank Stuart for the superb comedy spectacle in the second half of his post, in which he explains at some length that the website he's posting on, and which he has just boasted about the immense popularity of, does not in fact exist, and has not existed since May 2021.  The space-time continuum may never recover from a contradiction like that.  As evidence of the non-existence of Wings Over Scotland, he cites the fact that he's only posted 95 blogposts on it since it "closed", which works out at just over one article every six days.  Well, say no more, Stu, clearly there is but a shapeless void where your website used to be.

(But actually, let's dispense with the straw man - the point I made was not about the last eighteen months, but about the first eleven days of November 2022, in which Stuart posted no fewer than *nine* times.  That looks very much like he's back to full-time blogging for the time being, possibly due in part to his boyish excitement at Elon Musk indirectly enabling his return to Twitter.)

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20 comments:

  1. Are you sure you're interpreting those stats correctly, James? 60K is a lot less than I had assumed.

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    1. As far as I can see, just under 60,000 per month is the correct average for unique visitors. The only caveat is that it's the average for the first six months of this year, which might not be typical.

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  2. I read Wings regularly. He does produce some very interesting material. However, there is a nastiness there that does him and the cause a disservice. He clearly cannot take even a modicum of constructive criticism. Holding strong opinions is one thing, being a highly opinionated narcissist is another. Comparing the speaking of Gaelic to the burning of witches switched off many in my fair land (Wales), let me tell you.

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    1. Stuart Campbell's driving cause and ambition is Stuart Campbell

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    2. Campbell's literal aim is to eradicate the Gaelic language, a key component of Scottish culture. That should be the end of the conversation as far as any true independence supporter is concerned. He's not one of us, he despises our values.

      And his views on Hillsborough are even more abhorrent.

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  3. In other news I see Sturgeon and her gang have taken to self Identifying as disabled. Setting a very poor example.

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  4. Now youve done it!
    He's just gone full "tonto!!! " ... lol

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    1. If you're talking about the update to his post, it's actually a rather tame effort, I've seen a lot worse from him than that. He just calls me "quite bananas" and admits that he's always based his inflated claims about Wings on the number of times the same people visit, rather than on overall readership numbers, which he seems to tacitly accept are not especially high. On the whole a very gracious and courteous admission by his standards - he doesn't call me a "c**t" or anything. He must be mellowing as he gets older.

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    2. James, also only "purple with rage " which again is pretty mild for Campbell. Hope your face is back to its normal colour. So maybe he likes you a teeny weeny bitπŸ˜€πŸ˜€πŸ˜€.

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    3. I'm partial to a spot of Stu Bingo, I must admit. Thin pickings today, though.

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  5. I suspect most Yes folk have forgotten WOS - times have crystallised thinking - we're not beginers anymore, we're experienced. We can and will identify the Brit b.s. - but it's the SNP that needs to be kept on the straight-and-narrow to indpendence. WOS has served it's purpose, most all sites are redundant now. Leadership is most important now, not education - we're educated. However, your site is valuable - analysing polls (and keeping our spirits up on many occasions) gives us a measure of success. The revolution will be televised but fought on the door step. WOS, effectively, is no longer relevant, unless somehow he finds a relevance, but in 2022 it's difficult to see how that could be realistic when even FB and Twitter are stagnant, and we've already largely maxed out our gains on social media. We're educated, we're less naive, we can't beat the Brits on traditional media, we've maxed out social media, so it's mouth-to-ear door step work. But your polling analysis is a support we need - so much Brit b.s. , exaggeration and polling lies are not being properly or consistently countermanded elsewhere.

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  6. I don't care about the stats; I read what I like. And I feel that both James Kelly and Stuart Campbell are on my side, in their somewhat different ways.

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  7. Well known WGD numpty Irish Skier is up to his old tricks again of bigging up Sturgeon but only telling part of the story again.

    Skier says Sturgeon stated in her recent meeting with Sunak that she intended to honour her mandate for Indyref2 with or without the UK government's agreement.

    This is what she said:- "...... but I also said I intend to honour that mandate, with or without the UK government's agreement, ALBEIT ENTIRELY CONSTITUTIONALY AND LEGALLY."
    The last part is my bold. So Skier deliberately misses out the key qualifications Sturgeon puts on holding Indyref2. What a Sturgeon propagandist.

    In summary, Sturgeon is now happy to ditch the sec 30 Gold standard that she said was absolutely essential for years but is still holding on to the qualifications that it must comply with the UK constitution and law. Therefore all it needs is for Sunak to pass a law declaring anything Sturgeon plans to do on independence as illegal and Sturgeon will fold and blame the bad unionists for making it illegal to deliver on independence but she will try and get more devolved powers or some other sop to the numpties.

    So ask yourself why did Irish/Scottish/French Skier ignore the very important qualifications that Sturgeon made. It is very hard to miss them.

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  8. Yet another attempt to post an abusive comment from "Bill Dunblane" (you're wasting your own time, mate, they're never going to be published). However, this one is worthy of brief note due to his rather bewildering declaration that he has "stopped publishing" Scot Goes Pop due to "this" - with "this" presumably being occasional mild criticisms of his hero Campbell (in contrast to Campbell himself calling women "mercifully deceased" and MPs "traitors", which Bill presumably warmly applauds). I must say I had no idea that Bill was my publisher, and if I had known I'd have been looking for a new one long before now. In any case, I blocked Bill on Twitter after his previous attempt at leaving an abusive comment, so it's fair to say the relationship between publisher and author had already irretrievably broken down. Bye, Bill.

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  9. The Rev tells porkie pies? Now who would have thought that ?!

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  10. Great post, James. Please continue to speak out against Stuart Campbell's worst excesses.

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  11. James. I suspect the unique visitors will actually be a further fraction of the numbers you have demonstrated. The reason being - correct me if I'm wrong - that it doesn't take into account the "Unique Visitors" who may view the site from more than one device. At a conservative estimate I would reckon a divider of 3 for example laptop, phone and tablet. Some marketers even rate the number of potential unique identifying devices as high as 10 for the average punter. Would be interested on what you thought about that. Take care and keep up the good fight.

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    1. Yes, that's possible - that hadn't actually occurred to me. Another reason the number might be an overestimate is that it's not totally clear how his stats are defining "unique visitors". I remember back in the day the same person could be counted as unique once per day, or up to thirty-one times per month. I'm assuming in this case each person (or device) is only counted once in the specified period, but that assumption might be wrong.

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