Guest/Member Ratio

[melinx]

Has anyone else noticed that there are consistently around 10 to 20 times more guests than members using the forum at any one time ?

If they are genuinely guests and not members who just haven't logged in it makes TC an awfully popular forum.

[Whippit]

mostly bots

[melinx]

bots

[Whippit]

Automated search algorithms, used by all the different search engines and, unfortunately spammers and phishers.

[melinx]

I see the ratio seems to have greatly increased over the past 12 months or so and if it's due to automated search algorithms how come I very rarely find any reference to TC when I do a search ?

Curious

[Whippit]

search vauxhall carlton on google and its top ranked after wikipedia (who always come top in non promoted searchs)

same on ask

not so good on yahoo or bing..........so dont use them

[kevinfourlegs]

Yes, I have noticed the ratio. TC has 945 members, so how many of those are still active? In the archives I have seen several of the old usernames that are no longer on here. If there are 945 members, how come its nearly always the same motley crew that pop up on here? Just an observation.

[Murph]

Alot of the older members have stopped logging in now, and some of the others will be non-posting lurkers - we always have a few of those.

Every now and then we do have a clear out of all the accounts that have never posted, just to keep the server tidy as much as anything else, but personally I never delete an account that has posted because it starts to make out threads look untidy.

[Land-Barge]

Those lurkers may be future carlton owners, i lurked for a while as i looked for a GSi before i got the barge

[stemo]

Yes, I have noticed the ratio. TC has 945 members, so how many of those are still active? In the archives I have seen several of the old usernames that are no longer on here. If there are 945 members, how come its nearly always the same motley crew that pop up on here? Just an observation.

You tend to find that a lot on forums, a few that I'm on tend to have a core collective of frequent posters. Then around them you have the people that drop in once in a while and read more than they post up. Some people actually don't feel confident in signing up and posting belive it or not...

Those lurkers may be future carlton owners, i lurked for a while as i looked for a GSi before i got the barge

I too was a lurker for a while after I got my barge! Glad I signed up...

[melinx]

search vauxhall carlton on google and its top ranked after wikipedia (who always come top in non promoted searchs)

I've had a look; very impressive

The searches that I was referring to were on subjects that I know have been covered in TC but only about 1% of the time do I find myself pointed to TC 

I see the ratio seems to have greatly increased over the past 12 months or so and if it's due to automated search algorithms how come I very rarely find any reference to TC when I do a search ?

Curious