This morning at about 10:34:40 Arizona time, the hit counter for the Never Forget Tribute rolled past ninety-four million. The hit counter displays an approximation of the number of times that the Tribute has been accessed since August of 2005, the date when it was made available to other websites. Knowing the exact count is virtually impossible, since we only began tracking it after it had been deployed for a couple of years. We used an extrapolation algorithm to establish the approximate count back then, and have incorporated a real-time hit counter since.
The Hits per hour and Hits per day readouts are also approximations. One thing for sure, though, is that the HPD and HPH have diminished from their peak values from about 2009; at that time there were more than 1000 hits per hour. I suppose that a lot of bloggers who previously displayed the Tribute have dropped out of the game. I also suspect that the paradigm shift towards social media had an effect of reducing hits to blogging sites.
The last time we posted about the hit counter was when it passed 90,000,000 in December of 2014. We again note that the hits continue to diminish. In the last post, we extrapolated passing a hundred million hits during this year, but also noted the hits dropping off due to attrition in the blogosphere and a shift to social media other than blogging.
We also adjusted the hits per hour and hits per day estimation based on more recent hit data. As you can see, the HPH and HPD estimates in the image above are substantially greater than the hit counter graphic numbers displayed in the right sidebar.
Despite the decline in popularity of the Never Forget Tribute graphic, we will continue to support those sites that display it. We will also continue to NEVER FORGET the surprise attacks by Islamic Terrorists.