IV. Sessions by Website and Year

(Alphabetical order with parent site first) [Launch date] 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 TOTALS BY YEAR 503,805 1,517,612 2,182,575 3,554,575 5,447,287 6,523,545 10,322,703 14,419,041 23,876,829 % Increase Over Previous Year - 201% 44% 63% 53% 20% 58% 40% 66% Parent Site ProCon.org [July 12, 2004] 61,360 65,923 222,011 347,241 799,756 1,123,591 1,551,406 1,987,984 3,104,293 Issue Sites 1. 2008 Election [Dec. 12, 2007] [Archived - no longer updated] - - - 22,353 914,622 195,896 259,142 252,178 311,170 2. 2012 Election [Oct. 24, 2011] - - - - - - - 121,585 1,872,804 3. Abortion [Apr. 21, 2010] - - - - - - 55,986 177,009 446,205 4. ACLU [July 12, 2004] 30,397 51,170 183,536 348,068 279,171 289,788 319,260 340,633 384,116 5. Alternative Energy [Mar. 2, 2009] - - - - - 94,253 144,065 241,112 321,297 6. Big Three Auto [Dec. 3, 2008] [Archived - no longer updated] - - - - 18,708 57,137 59,855 65,805 65,863 7. Born Gay [July, 12, 2004] 68,284 111,991 170,610 265,303 187,608 204,392 265,690 291,835 355,657 8. Cell Phones [Sep. 24, 2009] - - - - - 20,665 70,700 108,497 149,902 9. Churches and Taxes [Nov. 11, 2011] - - - - - - - 6,558 57,924 10. Climate Change [June 15, 2010] - - - - - - 23,580 64,207 139,819 11. Clinton [Oct. 18, 2010] - - - - - - 6,048 30,729 79,949 12. College Football [Nov. 20, 2009] - - - - - 4,727 47,754 83,458 127,859 13. Concealed Guns [Mar. 31, 2010] - - - - - - 38,665 103,152 198,604 14. Corporate Tax Rate & Jobs [Dec. 13, 2012] - - - - - - - - 2,649 15. Cuba Embargo [Dec. 20, 2012] - - - - - - - - 1,732 16. D.A.R.E [Feb. 18, 2010] - - - - - - 48,773 67,186 85,621 17. Death Penalty [July 31, 2008] - - - - 70,093 370,199 566,639 946,297 1,387,191 18. Drinking Age [July 29, 2009] - - - - - 75,397 388,280 569,320 845,468 19. Euthanasia [Jan 8, 2007] - - - 285,313 378,781 488,950 630,292 767,043 936,014 20. Felon Voting [May 1, 2007] - - - 41,596 148,905 114,725 170,030 205,664 510,911 21. Gay Marriage [Sep. 16, 2010] - - - - - - 27,572 251,205 919,015 22. Gold Standard [Dec. 31, 2012] - - - - - - - - 265 23. Golf [May 24, 2012] - - - - - - - - 30,499 24. Obamacare / Health Care Laws [Sep. 2, 2010] - - - - - - 41,863 216,904 443,465 25. Illegal Immigration [Nov. 26, 2007] - - - 15,465 220,988 275,825 479,988 516,749 661,251 26. Insider Trading by Congress [May 30, 2008] - - - - 25,690 73,188 83,513 116,630 169,609 27. Israeli - Palestinian Conflict [July 12, 2004] 45,168 275,957 446,958 477,342 377,412 414,209 428,128 490,897 615,544 28. Medical Marijuana [July 12, 2004] 179,040 481,500 618,002 774,851 758,062 1,217,054 2,162,474 2,650,962 3,935,385 29. Milk [Sep. 28, 2008] - - - 29,427 164,066 181,617 238,392 337,299 453,952 30. Nuclear Power [July 12, 2004] [Archived - no longer updated] 4,022 15,232 32,627 41,658 50,625 54,915 61,488 81,302 49,697 31. Obesity [Dec. 28, 2009] - - - - - 496 67,866 99,181 149,437 32. Prescription Drug Ads [June 8, 2009] - - - - - 18,647 47,030 70,492 85,801 33. Prostitution [May 14, 2007] - - - 151,660 440,317 481,055 610,499 756,271 987,539 34. Reagan [Oct. 18, 2010] - - - - - - 8,409 44,231 92,907 35. Right to Health Care [Sep. 18, 2009] - - - - - 32,695 117,871 173,570 311,210 36. Rose Bird [July 12, 2004] [Archived - no longer updated] 3,708 9,668 12,862 16,346 19,234 22,782 26,491 33,499 26,516 37. Social Networking [Oct. 14, 2009] - - - - - 19,432 128,602 382,692 587,513 38. Social Security [Nov. 24, 2009] - - - - - 3,496 49,989 85,336 100,442 39. Sports and Drugs [Dec. 29, 2008] - - - - 460 139,332 204,846 301,629 539,759 40. Standardized Tests [June 22, 2011] - - - - - - - 49,778 244,849 41. Tablets vs. Textbooks [Nov. 20, 2012] - - - - - - - - 24,610 42. Teacher Tenure [Jan. 13, 2011] - - - - - - - 82,648 124,503 43. Under God in the Pledge [July 12, 2004] 29,924 158,720 149,094 249,351 190,326 183,063 218,676 289,904 448,915 44. US - Iraq War [July 12, 2004] 81,902 347,451 315,873 401,776 298,451 281,812 324,083 331,341 336,451 45. Vaccines for Kids [Jan. 18, 2010] - - - - - - 60,928 110,564 212,619 46. Vegetarianism [Apr. 21, 2011] - - - - - - - 60,643 208,124 47. Video Games and Violence [Dec. 9, 2009] - - - - - 2,800 152,209 320,981 554,559 48. Voting Machines [May 23, 2006] - - 31,002 86,825 104,012 81,407 117,552 99,066 130,180 49. WTC Muslim Center [Oct. 5, 2010] - - - - - - 18,069 35,015 47,165 TOTALS BY YEAR 503,805 1,517,612 2,182,575 3,554,575 5,447,287 6,523,545 10,322,703 14,419,041 23,876,829 % Increase Over Previous Year - 201% 44% 63% 53% 20% 58% 40% 66% (Alphabetical order with parent site first) [Launch date] 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

1. "Unique visitors" are defined by Google Analytics as (as of May 16, 2012): "Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies." ProCon.org determines unique visitors each month then adds all the monthly data together for the year's total.

2. "Pageviews" are defined by Google Analytics as (as of Nov. 4, 2009): "A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well."

 

3. "Hits" are defined by Google Analytics as (as of May 16, 2012): "A request to the web server for a file. This can be an HTML page, an image (jpeg, gif, png, etc.), a sound clip, a cgi script, and many other file types. An HTML page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. Therefore, the number of hits a website receives is not a valid popularity gauge, but rather is an indication of server use and loading."

 

4. "Ad impressions" are defined by Webopedia as (as of May 11, 2010): "An advertisement's appearance on an accessed Web page. For example, if the page you're on shows three ads, that's three impressions. Advertisers use impressions to measure the number of views their ads receive, and publishers often sell ad space according to impressions."

5. "Sessions" are defined by Urchin (now owned by Google) - the sofware program used to track our traffic website - as (as of Nov. 4, 2009) any 30-minute or less period of time in which an individual IP address accesses one or more files from one ProCon.org website.

Some examples of how sessions are counted:

* If a person looks at the Medical Marijuana ProCon.org Historical Timeline for five minutes, leaves their computer for 15 minutes to get a snack, and then returns to view the Medical Marijuana ProCon.org Votes and Polls page, then that use counts as one session.

* If a person looks at ProCon.org for five minutes, then ACLU ProCon.org for 10 minutes, then back to ProCon.org for five minutes, then that use counts as two sessions.

* If a person looks at US-Iraq ProCon.org for 10 minutes, then Israeli-Palestinian ProCon.org for 40 minutes, and then back to US-Iraq ProCon.org for 30 minutes, then that use counts as four sessions.

* If a person uses ACLU ProCon.org for 70 minutes, then uses Born Gay ProCon.org for 70 minutes, then that use counts as six sessions.

* If a person uses six of ProCon.org's websites for 40 minutes each, then that use counts as 12 sessions.

* If a person looks at a ProCon.org issue site (Born Gay ProCon.org, ACLU ProCon.org, etc.) for 20 minutes, then an hour later revisits the same site for another 5 minutes, then that use counts as two sessions.

Note, however, that we have learned as of Aug. 2008 that:

A. If a person looks at a third party website (say, for example, Google.com) for two seconds and that Google.com page happens to have on it an image (say, for example, a button labeled "Visit ProCon.org") loading directly from the ProCon.org website, then the ProCon.org button having loaded on the Google.com page counts as one session even though the person never clicked on the "Visit ProCon.org" button and may not have even noticed the button. However, if that same "Visit ProCon.org" button loaded directly from the Google.com website vs. directly from the ProCon.org website, then it would not count as a session.

[Note: We did not count 90,000 sessions for Medical Marijuana ProCon.org in July 2008 because the traffic came from a button at stopthedrugwar.org using an image that loaded directly from the ProCon.org server. We also did not count 64,722 sessions in the third quarter of 2008 because that traffic came from an image on the 2008 Election ProCon.org website that was being loaded directly from our Under God ProCon.org website. The reason that we removed the 154,722 "sessions" was because those visitors had not even viewed the site that recorded the session.]

B. Because we changed our URLs on June 30, 2008 to include third-level domains (aclu.procon.org, medicalmarijuana.procon.org, borngay.procon.org, etc) instead of their prior two-level domain format (www.acluprocon.org, www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org, www.borngayprocon.org, etc.) if a person visits a bookmarked ProCon.org URL (say www.medicalmarijuana.procon.org/california.htm) that automatically redirects him/her to a different URL on a new third-level domain ProCon.org website (say medicalmarijuana.procon.org/california.asp) then that counts as two sessions even though the person never consciously selected two sites to visit.

[Note: We did not count 216,574 sessions in the third quarter of 2008 because that traffic was coming from WWW links that were being automatically routed to non-WWW pages and were therefore being double counted.]

6. Extrapolations. While ProCon.org traffic software has always tracked sessions, it has not always tracked absolute unique visitors, pageviews, and hits. Some of the traffic data (absolute unique visitors, 2004-2007; pageviews and hits, 2004-2005) were extrapolated based on their relation to sessions traffic.

7. Pageviews Adjustment: In 2011, we adjusted the number of pageviews down by 14,310,311 (28.9%) from 49,487,079 to 35,176,768 because of a configuration error with our reader comments pages. The security mechanism known as CAPCHA, which requires people to type the characters before their comment can be submitted, was generating additional and bogus pageviews. We fixed the configuration error and adjusted our 2011 traffic numbers to reflect only genuine pageviews.