Scot Goes Pop soars to become the fifth most-read pro-independence website in Scotland, according to bombshell claimed numbers from Stuart Campbell

Every so often, Stuart Campbell randomly decides to have a prolonged boast about how he is supposedly by far the most popular blogger in the known galaxy, and one of the advantages of that from my point of view is that he sometimes draws up entire ranking lists of blogs with Wings at the top, which allows me to see how Scot Goes Pop is getting on in his alleged pecking order.  Pretty darn well at the moment is the answer...

Alleged "traffic share" of pro-independence websites in February 2024 (unsourced figures posted by Stuart Campbell):

1) Wings Over Scotland: 63.29% (-0.84%)

2) Yours For Scotland: 11.08% (+63.88%)

3) Talking Up Scotland: 7.90% (+7.95%)

4) Bella Caledonia: 7.73% (+117.98%)

5) Scot Goes Pop: 4.18% (+25.98%)

6) Robin McAlpine: 2.60% (-40.30%)

7) Wee Ginger Dug: 1.70% (-71.22%)

8) Believe In Scotland: 1.22% (+296.71%)

9) Barrhead Boy: 0.30% (-93.52%)

Curiously, as far as I can see Mr Campbell doesn't offer any source at all for these figures.  His previous boast-fests attributed any numbers to SimilarWeb, a notoriously inaccurate "guesstimate" website which also claimed Wings Over Scotland was based in Glasgow (rather than, say, Bath), had between eleven and fifty "employees" (ahem), and had a "turnover" of between $2,000,000 and $5,000,000.  But the last time I looked at SimilarWeb, it had introduced a paywall, so perhaps Mr Campbell's sudden bashfulness about his source means he's switched to another free comparison site which people would find even less credible.  That would make sense, because the new numbers are presented in a different format from the old SimilarWeb estimates, and some of the rankings do not remotely tally up with what SimilarWeb used to show.

As in the past, we can safely assume Wings Over Scotland's own wildly inflated "traffic share" is largely bulls*** caused by his readers treating the site as a de facto discussion forum - it's similar to the phenomenon we used to see in UK-wide political blogs ten or fifteen years ago, when Iain Dale's site had several times as many unique readers as Political Betting, but Political Betting could still technically claim to be the most-read site due to a small number of people constantly hitting refresh to see if new comments had been posted, and thus artificially generating lots of page views.  So if there is any interest in the numbers Mr Campbell has posted, it lies in the rankings of the non-Wings sites. (And I'll gloss over the fact that Wings is no longer a pro-independence site anyway, because he's said he would abstain in any new indyref held in any remotely foreseeable circumstances, ie. with the SNP still in existence.)

It's no surprise at all to see Yours For Scotland by Iain Lawson at the top, due to the constant supply of well-informed gossip and exclusives.  Talking Up Scotland, better known in these parts as Global Ferry News, is usually updated several times a day and is extremely popular with SNP leadership loyalists (of which there are still plenty), so its runner-up spot also makes sense.  Bella Caledonia, as a well-resourced, multi-author site, really ought to be doing better, but of course it may well be, because we know nothing at all about the provenance of these numbers.

I know from my own real stats that Scot Goes Pop's traffic has indeed increased significantly in recent weeks (perhaps because it's election year and this is a polling blog), so that might tally with the sharp increase also seen in Mr Campbell's figures - but there again it might just be a lucky guess.  I'm much more sceptical about the lower rankings.  Wee Ginger Dug isn't updated as often as it used to be, so perhaps there's been some slippage as a result, but I can't see any particular reason for a slump in traffic for either Robin McAlpine or Barrhead Boy.

Treat with caution.  Wherever Mr Campbell is getting his numbers from, they'll be vague ballpark guesses at best.

UPDATE: Since I published this blogpost, Mr Campbell has changed his ranking list to include a tenth site, Off Topic Scotland, which has a small "traffic share" of 0.25%.  This very slightly reduces the traffic share of the other nine, but weirdly the percentage changes have been altered out of all recognition.  Bella Caledonia, for example, has gone from a 117.98% increase in the original list to a 3.18% decrease in the new list.  That plainly makes no sense whatsoever.