It used to be more seen, more read, more shared, more commented, more searched, more linked, more noticed, more quoted, more known, more relevant. Arguably it used to be more influential, although I mean that in a purely relative sense. And now it's not.
This blog has peaked.
It was on the up for a very long time, right from that very first day in 2002. It didn't take long to get recognised, the blogosphere being a more supportive place in those days, and gradually more and more people became aware of diamond geezer. Since then it's been a mostly upward journey, gaining readers and recognition year on year, and also a growing band of commenters ready to share their thoughts and anecdotes on the matter in hand. I've long been impressed that this blog continues to generate readership and reaction when the wider general direction of travel is decay and silence.
2003 - 250 visitors a day, 3000 comments a year
2008 - 1000 7000
2013 - 1800 8000
2018 - 2400 11000
2023 - 2600 10000
But things aren't as upward as they used to be, not across the board, with indications that numbers are on the turn and people aren't dropping by as often as they did. Then those that do turn up aren't saying as much, and others who might have directed readers in this direction simply aren't there any more. This isn't a complaint, more an observation, a sense that long-form text-based bloggage has had its day and I'm doing well to have retained the interest I still have. Thanks for still being here.
According to my stats packages 2024 was the best year ever for visitors to this blog but 2025 hasn't been as good. Numbers have been in decline since the start of the year, and even the usual post-summer pick-up hasn't happened. Nothing terminal, indeed still frankly miraculous figures by 2015 standards, but a noticeable downward trend all the same. Also I suspect a lot of the supposed increase in recent years has just been bots, crawlers and AI-feeders dropping by to harvest data, and if they're excluded the decline probably started earlier and digs deeper.
Another reason readership is down is that referrals are down. Time was when I'd check the data and think "oh that's nice, I see X has linked to my post on Y". But this hardly happens any more, maybe two or three times a month, and if it wasn't for Ian Visits kindly including me in his weekly rail news round-up it'd be even less. My post on ticket offices brought a fair few extra folk here this week, but I wrote far better stuff than that which only already-regular readers will have noticed. The blogosphere/Substack universe is much smaller than it used to be, and most of what remains is more interested in saying "look at me!" than "look at them".
Jan 2025 - 19,600 clicks from Google
Feb 2025 - 20,200
Mar 2025 - 20,700
Apr 2025 - 18,400
May 2025 - 17,300
Jun 2025 - 16,600
Jul 2025 - 15,800
Aug 2025 - 15,000
Search engines no longer nudge as many readers my way as they once did. Google send me a monthly summary of search engine referrals, usually to confirm that "Where to sit on a Crossrail train" and "Free parking" remain my most popular posts. But since the start of the year they've also shown an inexorable decline in Google clicks, down as much as 25% in the space of just six months. I blame the AI summaries that now appear at the top of many results pages, which many people seem all too happy to read without ever scrolling down or clicking through to see if the unhuman text is actually true.
Other social media services have degraded too. My @diamondgzrblog daily tweet used to get 700 views before Elon Musk destroyed Twitter but these days the tumbleweed service barely registers 200 views, and hardly any of them click through anyway. If you're the kindly soul who insists on plugging all my transport posts on Reddit thanks, but hardly anyone notices, let alone comes to read the full story. When writing what I think might be a damned good post I am increasingly aware that only those who already know I exist will ever see it. It's great to have a loyal audience, but I'm only in this privileged position because I got noticed before the mechanism for noticing people collapsed.
Also my audience is increasingly reading the blog on a phone rather than a laptop. Google's monthly summaries always include data on devices used, as pictured above, so for example five years ago desktop readers still outnumbered smartphone users. The pendulum's now swung very much the other way with smartphone usage more than twice as popular, the changeover point having arrived in December 2021. I can't complain because if you look at the actual figures I have more desktop-clickers than I ever used to, it's just that smartphone-clickers have increased four-fold. But when they arrive they find this anachronistic 2002 template that definitely isn't mobile-friendly, and I do wonder how many people ever read the post they clicked through to, let alone ever come back.
Dec 2024 - 851 comments
Feb 2025 - 764
Apr 2025 - 760
Jun 2025 - 719
Aug 2025 - 699
Also the number of comments on the blog is on the decline. Engagement varies a lot according to topic, also a tiny quiz can easily boost totals by 50 so don't read too much into the individual ups and downs. But I do sometimes sit here and think "from past experience this'll be a 30-something" and it comes in nearer 20, or "people are bound to have comments today" and it limps in at 5. For example my Beachy Head write-ups normally average 16 comments on the first day, based on data from the last ten years, but this year we're down to 12.
There are bloggers out there who'd be thrilled to get 70 comments in a year, let alone 700 in a month, so I'm not complaining about my reduced engagement. But something is discouraging readers from leaving comments as often as they used to, and there may be several factors involved. It might be that the conversation's moved on and now takes place on social media. It might be that bespoke pop-up boxes are too fiddly for my new majority of smartphone readers. It might be that people are reticent to leave a comment for fear of what the reaction might be. It might be I'm writing less interesting subject matter. It might be that commenting is something older people do and I'm not refreshing my audience with younger readers. It might be all sorts of things but it is definitely a thing, whyever it may be.
It remains amazing that a blog started in an idle moment on a Sunday afternoon in 2002 still has readers, engagement and a reputation. I have to be fair put a lot of effort into it, but I've always been fundamentally reassured that more people were discovering it with every passing year. Now it seems the direction of travel is gently downward, thankfully from a high level but downward all the same, and will likely continue that way in the coming years. I have no intention of stopping writing just because not quite so many people are reading or leaving comments, but it's increasingly clear that not quite so many are.
