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This website has broken the 1200 visits per day monthly average just twice --- in November of last year, which included the centennial of Panama's independence, and this past May, which coincided with the presidential elections. We just missed that mark in September, at 1194 visits per day, but that number is deceptive.

Between September 9 and 16, The Panama News was subject to an electronic attack, wherein a number of Internet filters were working in such a way as to classify this publication as if it were obscenity or hate literature, such that people trying to get to the website received a "forbidden" message. Because of the timing of this phenomenon, it appears doubtful that it was some automated machine response. Almost certainly, somebody for some reason put us on some sort of an electronic list that for a little more than a week had our readership numbers off by between 30 and 50 percent.

As mysteriously as the problem came, it went away, and since it went The Panama News readership figures have been at record levels for us. No, we don't beat CNN.com, but then CNN/Time/Warner/aol doesn't cover Panama, either. Punch in "Panama" on a Google keyword search and you will notice that we rank very highly among the English-language sites about this country.

The Panama News from time to time publishes the download statistics we get from our webserver, usually in the form of the charts that they provide. We will provide more detailed information from the web logs that our webserver provides to those who ask for it --- even our competitors. We do this even though in Panama's media business culture it is considered a somewhat nutty idea to be transparent about the number of people that a news medium really reaches.

Let the others play their games. There wouldn't be much point in having The Panama News if we were like them.


Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Panama Canal cargo tonnage way up
The Internet prompts Third World revolution
Our September statistics
 

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