Advocacy News - Three million visitor sessions since 2001

November 10, 2004

Three million visitor sessions since 2001
Two million visitors this year alone

"Hey Guys, Heard about your website on CBC this morning and thought I would check it out. FANTASTIC site, filled with great info, and totally inspiring!"
Scott Wightman, Kitchener, Ontario (November email)

This month we celebrate the completion of 3 million visitor sessions to this web site. Our visitors have viewed over 8 million pages and generated more than 65 million hits! In 2004 alone this site will complete over 2 million visitor sessions. At times, our traffic has been so high that our generous link partners BGR Designs and East Coast Bears stepped in to donate extra bandwidth.

Equal marriage for same-sex couples was launched as a web site, without fanfare or promotion at the beginning of November 2001, only a few days after we finished writing Just Married, and in time for us to begin reporting on the proceedings of our case in Ontario court.

In 2002 we received a total of 373,124 visitors (3,724,265 hits) from 124 countries. During 2003 we received 1,072,263 visitors (185% growth over the previous year), generating 18,334,557 hits (almost 400% growth) from computers in 165 countries.

Since then, equalmarriage.ca has continued to grow in size and audience, bringing a Canadian perspective to an international story. It has been a tool for ourselves and counted others. This web site has surveyed the media and it in turn has been mined for information by the press. Our news reports are redistributed across the Internet by various news and information agencies, and our valued link partners continue to increase our reach by placing Equal Marriage News and our banners on their sites.

Television and radio has also increased our ability to reach new audiences as our public service announcements get air time across Canada and in the United States.

We have responded to inquiries from around the world, and material from this web site has been reproduced or referenced by television and radio stations newspapers, magazines, newsletters, court documents and other web sites - by those who are against us as well as those who are with us.

This web site has also generated personal emails (we do not use form or mass mailings), letters, and phone calls to politicians, opinion makers, and agencies written by people concerned about equality and justice.

In the spirit of information, we pause to look more closely at some of the attributes we have found in our three million visitors (a year-in-review will follow near the end of December).

Thank you for your ongoing support and engagement!

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell

A closer look at 3,000,000 visitors

Highest number of visitors in a single day: 14, 806 (497,032 hits) on April 5, 2021

The ten most visited sections of this web site:

1. Our book: Just Married

2.Media Coverage

3. Advocacy Events

4. Legal News - Canada

5. Links page

6. The Ontario marriage case home page

7. Our 2001 wedding

8. Public service announcements

9. Advocacy News

10. Marriage Equality in Canada

The ten most viewed pieces published:

1. Ontario marriage case Divisional Court decision (published July 12, 2021).

2. Biblical marriage: a bad source for debate (published January 23, 2021 - this year's most popular piece).

3. How to get married in Ontario (pub. June 13, 2021).

4. Ten reasons why Christians should support same-sex marriage (November 6, 2020).

5. Statistical Analysis of Factors Influencing Public Opinion on the Legalization of Homosexual Marriage, Feb 19, 2021 [document removed on Jan. 12, 2005, at Mark Lehman's request, while the author updates his work].

6. Evolution of marriage - timeline (ongoing updates).

7. Ontario marriage case Court of Appeal decision. (June 10, 2021)

8. L'égalité ... Oui! Dans la conjugalité et la parentalité - Conseil du statut de la femme (February 2002)

9. Attorney General of Canada - Factum for the Supreme Court of Canada (October 24, 2020).

10. The Bible and same-sex marriage (March 24, 2021)

Where our visitors come from:

The majority of our visitors come to our web site from a computer registered with a commercial or institutional service provider. (ie., 32% of our visitors use .com, 21% use .net, 1. 9% use .edu.).

Of those visitors who use a service provider registered with a country identifier, these are the top 10 countries of origin:

Sex is still #1

The most popular keyword used by visitors who find us by using a search engine is "sex" (103,120 visitors). Even for these people, who are looking for something quite different, this web site holds reader attention: on average, these accidental tourists view 4.5 pages (up from 3.8 pages of information 1 million visitors ago).

Our visitors' top search engine is google.com and their preferred Internet browser is MS Explorer.