The Church is very pleased to report that December 2013 was a record-breaking month with more than 1 million unique visitors to the United Church of God’s primary website UCG.org.

A total of 1,026,510 unique visits were recorded—with more than 1.8 million page views. For comparison, the preceding month of November saw 682,653 unique visitors (also a very good number)—for an increase month-to-month of more than 50 percent! The previous record for the 2012 calendar year was also the month of December—which saw traffic of 543,530. That number then became the “new normal” average in 2013.

“What’s amazing is that our visits in December 2013 alone equaled about one-sixth of our unique visits for the entire year—about 6 million,” said Media and Communications Services operation manager Peter Eddington. “Our prayer for 2014 is that God will bless our efforts so that 1 million-plus unique visitors per month will become the new norm in 2014 as well, and that God will provide the increase as we sow and water the seed being planted via the Web and our other proclamation efforts.”

Long-Tail Search Comprised Majority of Traffic

“More than half of these unique visits came to our site through what are called long-tail searches,” explained Internet manager Aaron Booth. “Long-tail searches are basically searches that include more than three words, and are therefore more specific than searches with fewer words. Many sites try to target specific keywords (which we do as well), but the traffic that comes from long-tail searches is higher quality—the people landing on our site are more likely to find what they’re looking for.” Mr. Booth added: “Our site has very strong long-tail search results on Google and other search engines because of the incredible body of work the Church has produced for the past 18 years—Good News articles, Beyond Today episodes and transcripts, Bible FAQs, booklets, commentaries, blogs and BT Dailies. People come across our site when they are looking for specific answers to questions they have, such as the ‘truth about Christmas’ and the ‘story of Jesus Christ.’”

Direct Visits, Ads, Social Traffic Makes Up the Rest

“The rest of the traffic came from a combination of direct traffic, paid advertising and social traffic,” said senior Web developer Tom Disher. “Direct traffic is made up of people who type in the Web address themselves or have a bookmark, and that accounted for about 200,000 people in and of itself—which is amazing because that means those people know who we are. Social traffic comes from people who find our site via sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Sharing items published on the website that you find valuable to social media is a great way to do your part in preaching the gospel.”

Mr. Eddington added: “Please continue to pray for our dedicated production staff and Web employees who work tirelessly to bring this about. As we continue producing high-quality material explaining the truth of God’s plan, our traffic should continue to increase. Right now our website is ranked number 13 in the entire world among Christian denomination websites according to Alexa.com. God willing, we would love to break into the top 10.”

May the good news of His Kingdom reach fertile ground amongst the Church’s millions of readers and viewers.