Last month we started the first in a series of monthly reports on the status of AAR. We’re happy to report that September was another good month. We added a variety of new content and visits continued to be strong.

We’re especially pleased that once again, 50 new reviews were posted, although this month, only three were DIKs, in contrast to seven during August. Hopefully, both for our readers, and our reviewers, October will bring more DIKs.

Those reviews are the heart and soul of AAR and readers made good use of them in September. There were 62,279 views of the new review page, and 152,055 views of the many reviews available at AAR. Additionally, there were 90,883 views of the advanced search option for the reviews database.

Both of our blogs were also busy during September. There were 18 new posts at the AAR News and Commentary Blog, and 17 at AAR After Hours. I always find it interesting to see which posts generate the most comments. At AAR News and Commentary Blog, aside from the Gabaldon giveaway, the two posts generating the most comments were Abi’s post at the end of the month on The Heavy Hero (or Heroine) and Lynn’s post You Never Forget the First.

Once again, AAR’s Alexa traffic rank increased; it’s up from 97,264 in August to 93,029 (the lower the number the better, and anything under 100,000 is something to be proud of). This is also a 19% three-month improvement.

When you visit AAR do you go to one or two pages, or visit a lot of different pages? For me, it depends on how much time I have, or if I have a particular purpose for my visit. In September, readers viewed an average of five pages during each visit, for a total of 2,132,097 page views during for the month.

The reader forums were busy during September, with 160 new threads, that generated 1,648 reader comments. Interestingly, while Let’s Talk Romance Novels had the most comments in August, Potpourri led the way in September. But readers didn’t just comment on new threads. Threads started in the beginning of 2008 were still receiving comments. Once again, the comments tell only a small portion of the story. The majority of threads receive far more views than comments. For example, a thread on My First official DNF received 15 comments, but had 1,593 views, over 100 times more than the comments.

Beyond the reviews, forums, and blogs, there is a wealth of content at AAR, and each of those sections regularly receives a large number of monthly visits. Among the other parts of AAR, If You Like was the top attraction in September, with over 4,000 visits. The Special Title Listings main page was next with over 3,600 visits, Interesting for me – as a pollster – the results of the 2007 Top 100 Romances poll received nearly 3,000 visits in September, almost two years after the poll was conducted (and no, we’re not quite ready to do another one). The transcript for the September AAR Book Club on Lord of Scoundrels has already had nearly 1,700 views.

We strive to give romance readers a variety of content, and to provide a wide range of forums for interacting. We have you all to thank for our continued success. See you back here next month.

-LinnieGayl Kimmel

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