This entry was posted on
Friday, October 31st, 2008 at
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under The Political Weblog Movement.

Lib Dem Voice – The curious case of Nadine Dorries’s website traffic: …the claim of 800,000 readers (or any reasonable variation on the term ‘readers’) looks to be wrong. I twice contacted Nadine Dorries’s office asking for an explanation or correction, once by email and once by phone, but have not received any response

1. Perhaps Mark could ask Nadine a question about her claims. On her ‘blog’ that doesn’t allow comments.

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2. Even she were a blogger (she isn’t) and if that mess of hers were a blog (it isn’t), she has yet to provide anything beyond these ridiculous numbers to back her claim to have “the most popular blog of any MP” (more).To repeat (this time with links); Even in a recent poll hosted and conducted by a close friend on a Conservative website she only came 4th in a field of 20. Did she win a secret competition or is she just making things up again?3. Not that she belonged in that poll in the first place. But she is Iain’s very close friend, and he got the final say on who he included in his poll and who he didn’t. Just another part of that poll’s occasionally scientific charm.4. Of course I’m going to mention Iain and Paul’s past difficult with statistics. Spinal Stats actually backs Mark’s case because Iain and Paul have been very careful about the specifics since then, if a little shy about the reasons why. (pause) Well, OK, maybe not that careful. Iain’s speakers’ bio claims 300,000 readers a month, and I’ve been informed that this information did come from Iain Dale. Iain also claims that this printed claim of 350,000 readers a month was an honest error… and not his. But don’t let all of that put you off how ridiculous Nadine’s claims are, because they really are quite stupendously over the top…5. Isn’t it odd that Nadine Dorries would have 500,000 or 800,000 readers a month on her not-a-blog and fewer than a thousand people a month reading her Wikipedia page (which is, typically, at or about 2nd place for searches for her name)? Even in her best month this year figures didn’t go much higher than 2,000 on that page, which gives us somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of her readers showing the least bit of curiosity about her, if we’re to believe her claims. Perhaps her loyal army of followers is immune to curiosity.[Incidentally, at a growth rate of 2,000 new readers per month (with none of them ever leaving, because she’s so great she has a 100% retention rate), it would take Nadine Dorries over 20 years to build an audience of 500,000 readers a month.]