ChemSpider Blog

Over the past year we have been interested in our website statistics and our growing traffic. I have blogged previously about Alexa and was challenged to review the Compete statistics. After growing in rankings for a few weeks we removed the Alexa widget and saw our rankings plummet. We then installed the Compete widget and saw ourselves go up the rankings quite dramatically before removing that widget and seeing our rankings decrease. Meanwhile, our own website statistics have shown consistent month to month growth with an average of about 4000 unique users per day at present (As shown in the figure below).

Bottom line, based on our observations, neither Alexa nor Compete give anywhere near valid statistics. At the SBS conference in St Louis this past week I asked the audience, about 60 people, how many in the room knew of or had heard of ChemSpider. ONE hand went up…and that was someone I had informed many months earlier. As I expressed to the audience…this was not disappointing news to me…it was quite exciting to know what the potential growth is as people are informed of the service. I expect the growth to continue, especially after the visits to the ACS and the SBS.

To celebrate our one year anniversary since going live at ACS Spring in Chicago in 2007 we lifted the title of beta from ChemSpider and released a new website design. I’ve already received some positive feedback on the new design and on us growing the service over the past year. We welcome any and all feedback though. What do you think of our contributions over the past year? What do you think of our new website. Let us know!

And Happy 1st Birthday ChemSpider…

For anyone with an interest in Chem(o)informatics and who lives in the Research Triangle area I highly recommend taking advantage of the lecture below to listen to “one of the greats” - Professor Johann Gasteiger. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Chemoinformatics - Addressing fundamental topics of a chemist

Prof. Dr. Johann Gasteiger

Computer-Chemie-Centrum
Institut für Organische Chemie I
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Nägelsbachstraße 25
91052 Erlangen
Deutschland / Germany

Thursday, April 17th, 2006

3:00PM -5:00PM

Kerr Hall, Rm. 2001, School of Pharmacy

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC 27599

Host: Prof. Alexander Tropsha

Sponsor: CECCR