Voicebot at 2 Million Page Views – What Happened and What We’ve Learned
There are now twice and many reasons to believe Voice and AI technology have hit a popularity growth curve as there were on June 6, 2018. On that fateful day, Voicebot readers pushed the publication past one million page views. On November 28, 2018, that number doubled and it has grown significantly over the past 30 days. It took 629 days to amass our first million page views and then just 175 days to deliver our second million.
According to Google Analytics data, those two million page views were spread across 1,473 articles and consumed 772 days of reading by 444,667 readers. So, most of those have likely read only a single article. My guess is that anyone reading this post has read several dozen articles and likely more than 100. Some of you no doubt have read several hundred. Thank you for all of your feedback, support, and social sharing on Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s fun to do this as a community. Here are some stats about the journey thus far:
- Page View Milestones: 113 days to 10k, 333 to 100k, 518 to 500k, 629 to 1 million, 804 to 2 million
- We had 1,156 article posts through 1 million page views with an average of 871 views per post, and that rose to 1,473 articles that averaged 1,361 page views per post for the 2 million mark. Granted, we have one post with over 50,000 page views so many of those articles didn’t break the 1k mark, but all are now fairly widely read.
- In any given week, more than 75% of our page views are articles more than a week old, and often it is more than 90%. Readers like our back catalog of industry information which is far easier to search than Google.
- 75 podcasts with a 5.0-star rating and 36 reviews in Apple Podcasts. Thanks to our listeners. Happy to have more reviews though. ;^)
- Over 444,000 unique readers…so far.
- Over 100 subscribers for our paid newsletter Voice Insider in the first three months. We weren’t sure if a dozen people would sign up, but a few readers assured us there was demand and asked us to start publishing. The demand is there and growing each month. Thanks to our patrons, heroes, and superheroes. You make it possible.
- Top 10 countries for readers: U.S., U.K., India, Canada, Germany, France, Australia (moved up 3 places), South Korea, Japan, Netherlands (new top 10 entry!)
- Voice has become a global audience with 48% of page views in the U.S. versus 52% elsewhere. That’s 3% swing in 6 months.
Top 5 Most Read Articles and Most Popular Infographic
- Amazon Alexa Skill Count Passes 15,000 July 2, 2017 (it was a monster, we had it first, it still gets views 18 months later)
- YouTube is Back on Amazon Echo Show November 21, 2017 (we also had this one first)
- Bezos Says More Than 20 Million Amazon Echo Devices Sold October 27, 2017 (the data was out there, we did the analysis)
- Google Home Beats Amazon Echo in Q1 2018 Global Smart Speaker Shipments May 23, 2018 (we put the data in context)
- U.S. Smart Speaker Market Share: Apple Debuts at 4.1%, Amazon Falls and Google Rises June 3, 2018 (Voicebot original research)
- Still the Honorable Mention: Google Duplex Won’t Be Available in These 12 States at Launch May 9, 2018 (we definitely had this one first)
- Most Popular Infographic: A Short History of the Voice Revolution (man, need to update this yet again…give us a couple of weeks)
Stuff We’ve Learned
- If your article hits page one of Google News, you get a lot of page views quickly
- Growth in both readers and page views are surprisingly consistent with predictable upticks in the holiday season
- Voice Insider’s popularity showed us there is an audience for real insider news beyond the standard stuff
- Articles that provide value to consumers do well in page views, but industry insights and data do the best on social media
- Our readers like that we add context in addition to reporting the news
- Everyone likes well-designed charts (thanks Ava!)
- There is a need for even more in-depth research focused on consumer and industry adoption
- It is easier to keep up with three people than two and we look forward to adding a fourth
- Cutting our page load time by 75% was seemingly noticed by no one, but may have helped drive more page views
- Voicebot represents a voice assistant intelligence repository and rapidly growing community; let’s connect!
The Voicebot Audience Speaks Out
“The central source of voice and AI industry data.” “The Wall Street Journal of Voice.” We love it when our readers (and listeners) share their thoughts about Voicebot.ai / Voicebot Podcast / Voice Insider / Voicebot Says / Voicebot Daily — both what they like and what they would like to see more of. Here are a few recent comments that we are proud to repost. A lot of work goes into publishing the news stories, recording the podcast, recording the Flash Briefing, writing up Voice Insider, and pulling together the reports. So, comments like those below are always a nice affirmation that the work matters. Thanks again for getting us to two million page views and much more.
If I were to recommend one single place to follow voice / AI news it would be Bret’s @voicebotai https://t.co/UkCtkoBhAM
— Ben Basche 🛸 (@basche42) December 24, 2018
I’m glad I was introduced to @voicebotai ! I’ll be following along from now on 👌
— Robert Boyle (@robertjboyle_) December 24, 2018
awesome episode, learned loads about voice assistants. Thanks for recording and sharing!
— Justin Morris (@justimorris) December 24, 2018
The bad news is, it took me over an hour to drive home tonight. The good news is, it was just enough time to listen to @voicebotai‘s year in review episode w/ @kjkausha @didou and @tomhewitson. https://t.co/WmeWUDt3yv
— Cathy Pearl (@cpearl42) December 21, 2018
⚫️ Excellent overview on the rise of #ConversationalUI.
⚫️ @bretkinsella is the editor and
publisher at @voicebotai
⚫️ The central source of voice and AI industry data. #ConversationalUX #VoiceFirst #SpeechInterface #Alexa #AmazonEcho #GoogleHomehttps://t.co/0AXlXxwTrc pic.twitter.com/74MKFaIkMT— Cobus Greyling (@CobusGreylingZA) December 5, 2018
Follow @bretkinsella Follow @voicebotai
