Great work Peter, thanks so much for doing this! Super helpful to be able to see all these numbers aggregated in the same place. And I love the categorization of the metrics. Strong upvote.
A couple of thoughts on metrics to include next year:
· I agree with Michelle’s comment that traffic for EA.org is an important metric to look at, especially since that’s the top result when people google EA. I’d be interested in both organic search web traffic, and overall traffic (ex paid traffic).
· In general, I think it’s most helpful to look at numbers excluding paid traffic to give a better sense of organic growth rates. As Aaron notes, this helps explain the EA newsletter trajectory, and it’d be interesting to see how excluding paid traffic might affect the 80k traffic numbers as well.
· Total operational spending by EA orgs could be a helpful perspective on how inputs to EA are changing over time; the current metrics are all focused on outputs, and it would be nice to relate the two.
Quick answer for 80k: Paid traffic only comes from our free Google Adwords, which is a fixed budget each month. Over the last year, about 12% of the traffic was paid, roughly 10,000-20,000 users per month. This isn’t driving growth because the budget isn’t growing.
In general, I think it’s most helpful to look at numbers excluding paid traffic to give a better sense of organic growth rates. As Aaron notes, this helps explain the EA newsletter trajectory, and it’d be interesting to see how excluding paid traffic might affect the 80k traffic numbers as well.
I think this is a good idea but I’m unsure if this data is available. I can try to make a better effort to find more data sources that do not include paid traffic for next year.
Total operational spending by EA orgs could be a helpful perspective on how inputs to EA are changing over time; the current metrics are all focused on outputs, and it would be nice to relate the two.
This is a metric I actually put some effort into collecting for this year—I tried to make a basket of orgs that have been around since ~2014 and made publicly accessible budgets, but it proved very time consuming to collect and I felt like it was potentially misleading due to orgs being excluded or orgs not publishing clear budgets.
My hope is that including “EA Funds payouts” could help capture some of this. One thing I really ought to have included but for some reason didn’t think to is also total OpenPhil grants (not just to GiveWell or excluding GiveWell) as this may also capture some of the growth in the broader EA space.
Re: non-paid traffic, it should be very easy (a few minutes) to pull traffic data ex-adwords for any sites that are set up on Google Analytics. Excluding other types of paid traffic/conversions (e.g. newsletter signups driven by FB ads) would be harder (though generally doable).
One thing I really ought to have included but for some reason didn’t think to is also total OpenPhil grants (not just to GiveWell or excluding GiveWell) as this may also capture some of the growth in the broader EA space.
Agree OpenPhil grants would be a helpful perspective on this, both total grants and grants within their EA focus area (which would be a proxy for meta investment)
Great work Peter, thanks so much for doing this! Super helpful to be able to see all these numbers aggregated in the same place. And I love the categorization of the metrics. Strong upvote.
A couple of thoughts on metrics to include next year:
· I agree with Michelle’s comment that traffic for EA.org is an important metric to look at, especially since that’s the top result when people google EA. I’d be interested in both organic search web traffic, and overall traffic (ex paid traffic).
· In general, I think it’s most helpful to look at numbers excluding paid traffic to give a better sense of organic growth rates. As Aaron notes, this helps explain the EA newsletter trajectory, and it’d be interesting to see how excluding paid traffic might affect the 80k traffic numbers as well.
· Total operational spending by EA orgs could be a helpful perspective on how inputs to EA are changing over time; the current metrics are all focused on outputs, and it would be nice to relate the two.
Quick answer for 80k: Paid traffic only comes from our free Google Adwords, which is a fixed budget each month. Over the last year, about 12% of the traffic was paid, roughly 10,000-20,000 users per month. This isn’t driving growth because the budget isn’t growing.
Thanks for clarifying Ben!
I think this is a good idea but I’m unsure if this data is available. I can try to make a better effort to find more data sources that do not include paid traffic for next year.
This is a metric I actually put some effort into collecting for this year—I tried to make a basket of orgs that have been around since ~2014 and made publicly accessible budgets, but it proved very time consuming to collect and I felt like it was potentially misleading due to orgs being excluded or orgs not publishing clear budgets.
My hope is that including “EA Funds payouts” could help capture some of this. One thing I really ought to have included but for some reason didn’t think to is also total OpenPhil grants (not just to GiveWell or excluding GiveWell) as this may also capture some of the growth in the broader EA space.
Re: non-paid traffic, it should be very easy (a few minutes) to pull traffic data ex-adwords for any sites that are set up on Google Analytics. Excluding other types of paid traffic/conversions (e.g. newsletter signups driven by FB ads) would be harder (though generally doable).
Agree OpenPhil grants would be a helpful perspective on this, both total grants and grants within their EA focus area (which would be a proxy for meta investment)