Saturday, January 2, 2010

Oriental Institute Website Traffic in 2009

I compiled a comparable list last year. Numbers below in parentheses are comparable figures for 2008.

Do you see any interesting trends? Add a comment below!

In 2009 987,455 (826,805) unique visitors came to the Oriental Institute website 1,385,391 (1,149,023) times, looking at 4,780,716 pages (3,982,345), averaging 3.45 pages per visit). 70.4 % of these visitors stayed 30 seconds or less before leaving, but 14.4 % stayed longer than 5 minutes.

The twenty five most frequently viewed pages on the Oriental Institute Website are:
  1. The Oriental Institute Home Page 536,391 visits
  2. The Museum Education Mummy Game 535,310 visits
  3. The Museum Home Page 79,669 visits
  4. The Museum Education Kid's Corner 72,460 visits
  5. NIPPUR - SACRED CITY OF ENLIL, SUPREME GOD OF SUMER AND AKKAD. Figure. 1 Map of ancient Mesopotamia. 56,257 visits
  6. Research at the Oriental Institute 37,392 visits
  7. Highlights from the Collection: Mesopotamia 31,867 visits
  8. The Oriental Institute Museum Hours 31,811 visits
  9. Highlights from the Collection 29,901 visits
  10. Death in Ancient Egypt 29,354 visits
  11. Oriental Institute Map Series - Site Maps 28,476 visits
  12. Catalog of Publications 28,187 visits
  13. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Science & Inventions 25,456 visits
  14. Oriental Institute Events 24,809 visits
  15. Museum Galleries 24,801 visits
  16. Persepolis and Ancient Iran 24,463 visits
  17. The 1905-1907 Breasted Expeditions to Egypt and Sudan 24,331 visits
  18. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Law & Government 22,911 visits
  19. The Oriental Institute Museum: The East Wing Galleries 21,495 visits
  20. The Edgar and Deborah Jannotta Mesopotamian Gallery 20,861 visits
  21. The Oriental Institute Home Page 20,327 visit
  22. Virtual Museum 19,920 visits
  23. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Architecture 19,816 visits
  24. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Writing 19,550 visits
  25. Lost Treasures from Iraq 19,253 visits

The top twenty-five points of entry to the Oriental Institute website are:
  1. The Museum Education Mummy Game 284 551 visitors entered the site here
  2. The Oriental Institute Home Page 104 340 visitors entered the site here
  3. NIPPUR - SACRED CITY OF ENLIL, SUPREME GOD OF SUMER AND AKKAD. Figure. 1 Map of ancient Mesopotamia 36 747 visitors entered the site here
  4. The Museum Education Kids' Corner 29 739 entered the site here
  5. The Museum Home Page 27,071 visitors entered the site here
  6. Death in Ancient Egypt 20,578 visitors entered the site here
  7. Highlights from the Collection: Mesopotamia 15,857 visitors entered the site here
  8. Oriental Institute Map Series - Site Maps 14,283 visitors entered the site here
  9. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Science & Inventions 12,656 visitors entered the site here.
  10. Persepolis and Ancient Iran 11,940 visitors entered the site here
  11. Highlights from the Collections 11,767 visitors entered the site here
  12. The Giza Plateau Mapping Project (GPMP) 11,693 visitors entered the site here
  13. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Law & Government 11,202 visitors entered the site here
  14. The Oriental Institute Home Page 10,779 visitors entered the site here
  15. Lost Treasures from Iraq 10,617 visitors entered the site here
  16. Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Web Resources for Young People and Teachers 10,465 visitors entered the site here
  17. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Architecture 9,884 visitors entered the site here
  18. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Writing 9,815 visitors entered the site here
  19. Virtual Museum 9,342 visitors entered the site here
  20. Museum Education Teacher Resource Center. Mesopotamia: Role of Women 8,451 visitors entered the site here
  21. Abzu 6,964 visitors entered the site here
  22. Constructing The Giza Plateau Computer Model (1990-1995) 6,679 visitors entered the site here
  23. Catalog of Publications: The Assyrian Dictionary 6,596 visitors entered the site here
  24. The Robert and Deborah Aliber Persian Gallery 6,209 visitors entered the site here
  25. WHO WAS WHO AMONG THE ROYAL MUMMIES 6,053 visitors entered the site here
These lists show some some interesting patterns:

Various pages in the complex developed by the Museum Education department remain heavily represented in the top 25 entry pages (nos. 1, 4, 9, 13, 16, 17, 18, and 20). This trend continues that observed last year

In each list, variants of the OI home page appear twice, once with and once without the final "/".

Both lists include five pages of specific interest:
  • Abzu is a link to a redirector, sending users (after a short explanation) to the current site of Abzu at the ETANA project at Vanderbilt University. Though Abzu has been served from Vanderbilt for several years it still received nearly thirty thousand hits (more than twenty thousand) on the OI website in 2009. While it is no longer among the twenty-five most popular pages it is still among the most p0pular points of entry to the website.
  • The Museum Education Mummy Game is the second most popular page (with more than a half million (nearly a quarter million) viewers in 2009 - double that of 2008) and is now the most frequent point of entry to the OI website. It includes no links back to either its source in the Museum Education site, or more generally to the OI home page.
  • WHO WAS WHO AMONG THE ROYAL MUMMIES, an article by Edward Wente appearing originally in the Oriental Institute News & Notes No. 144, Winter 1995, and which was among the very originally paper-based articles re-purposed for delivery on the website. A decade and a half later it remains among the most popular articles.
  • Death in Ancient Egypt and Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Web Resources for Young People and Teachers (both of which also ranked highly in last year's list, have never been converted to the new format, and have no links to them from elsewhere on the OI web.

I'll add more comments as they occur to me.


Finally, a list of the twenty-five most frequently downloaded digital versions (pdf) of formal publications of the Oriental Institute for 2008. Note that some of these are fairly recent, but others are old standards.

  1. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 12, P, 2005, downloaded 3787 times.
  2. OIS 5. Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Jeffrey Szuchman. 2009 downloaded 3192 times.
  3. OIMP 29. The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt, 2009 downloaded 2736 times.
  4. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 14, R, 1999, downloaded 2601 times.
  5. SAOC 52. A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text (P. Brooklyn 47.218.135). R. Jasnow. 1992 downloaded 2535 times.
  6. OIS 4. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Nicole Brisch, ed., downloaded 3152 times.
  7. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 1, 1964, downloaded 2457 times.
  8. OIS 3. Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Nicola Laneri, editor, with contributions by Nicola Laneri, Ellen F. Morris, Glenn M. Schwartz, Robert Chapman, Massimo Cultraro, Meredith S. Chesson, Alessandro Naso, Adam T. Smith, Dina Katz, Seth Richardson, Susan Pollock, Ian Rutherford, John Pollini, John Robb, and James A. Brown, downloaded 2129 times.
  9. MAD 2. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar, I. J. Gelb, 1952, downloaded 2062 times.
  10. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD), P, fascicle 3 (pattar to putkiya-), 1997, downloaded 1977 times.
  11. SAOC 62. Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, Robert D. Biggs, Jennie Myers, and Martha T. Roth, eds., downloaded 1973 times.
  12. SAOC 61. Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan, editors, downloaded 1925 times.
  13. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 18, T, 2006, downloaded 2613 times.
  14. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 8, K, 1971, downloaded 1840 times.
  15. AS 27. Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Volume 2, Martha T. Roth, Walter Farber, Matthew W. Stolper and Paula von Bechtolsheim, eds., 2007, downloaded 1799 times.
  16. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 19, T [Tet], 2006, downloaded 1713 times.
  17. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (second printing), downloaded 1696 times.
  18. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (first printing), downloaded 1527 times.
  19. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 2, 1968, downloaded 1476 times.
  20. MAD 3. Glossary of Old Akkadian, I. J. Gelb, 1957, downloaded 1337 times.
  21. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 9, L, 1973, downloaded 1337 times.
  22. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 2, B, 1965, downloaded 1316 times.
  23. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 13, Q, 1982, downloaded 1279 times.
  24. OIP 24. Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan Thorkild Jacobsen and Seton Lloyd. 1935, downloaded 1271 times.
  25. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 17, S [Shin], part 2, 1982, downloaded 1264 times.
OIS 2 in its two printings is the 17th and 18th most popularpublication - collectively it would have been No. 2, downloaded 3223 times (in 2008 it was 9th and 18th most popular digital publication of the OI - collectively it would have been No. 2, downloaded 3689 times).

Other popular publications available on the OI Website include:

The Oriental Institute has always has always been open about the traffic on its website. Historical statistics are accessible here. Current statistics are accessible here.
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