Patrick Comerford
The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me, and these figures passed the 28 million mark shortly after 7 am this morning (20 March 2026). This is the fifth time this month alone that the half-million figure in readership numbers has been passed, reaching 27.5 million last Monday (16 March 2026), 27 million last week (12 March 2026), 26.5 million the week before (3 March 2026) and 26 million at the beginning of the month (Sunday 1 March 2026), when the hits that day were also the highest daily figure I have ever recorded (318,307).
This year so far has seen a phenomenal amount of traffic on this blog, reaching a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (have been within the past eight or nine months, and the total of hits last month (February 2026) was the highest monthly total ever (3,386,504), with this blog passing the half-million mark seven times in all in February.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 6.5 million hits or visitors for 2026.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached five times this month alone. Half of the 28 million hits (14 million) have been within the last nine or ten months, since 1 July 2025.
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Throughout last year and this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in February alone, three were this month (March) and two were in January 2025:
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 280,802 (26 February 2026)
• 273,022 (27 February 2026)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 228,931 (18 March 2026)
• 195,391 (20 February 2026)
• 190,630 (23 February 2026)
• 190,467 (21 February 2026)
The number of readers has been overpowering this year and last, with the daily averages currently running at over 110,000 hits a day so far this month. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this figure of 28 million in context:
Venezuela has a population of about 28 million people, including Delcy Rodriguez, once a Maduro henchwoman, who has been installed by Trump as Venezuela’s acting president.
More than 28 million adults in the UK are now turning to artificial intelligence to help manage their money – making personal finance the nation’s number one use of AI, according to a report commissioned by Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds Banking Group’s Consumer Digital Index is the UK’s largest study of digital and financial capability.
Air has been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s in 28 million older Americans. Breathing polluted air may do more than harm your lungs – it could also increase your risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study of almost 28 million older Americans published last month.
Google has agreed this week to pay $28 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming that it favoured white and Asian employees by paying them more and putting them on higher career tracks than other workers.
Nearly 28 million outbound trips from the Middle East are at risk this year as a result of the disruption caused by the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran, according to research on behalf of Oxford Economics.
Australia is projected to reach a population of 28 million by next year (2027), having passed 27 million in early 2024. The figure represents a significant milestone in Australia’s rapid post-pandemic growth, which has seen an average increase of one million people every two or three years.
Albania, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea (formerly Spanish Guinea), Guinea Bissau and Haiti each has a land area of about 28,000 sq km or 28 million sq metres.
Norway is often described as having a mainland coastline of roughly 2,500 km, but that figure stretches to over 28,000 km (28 million sq metres) when fjords, bays, and 50,000 islands are included. The 28,000 km figure is an example of the coastline paradox, which explains that as the unit of measurement becomes smaller, the measured length of a convoluted coast increases.
And 28 million minutes is equal to 53 years, 2 months, and 25 days, or 466,666.6 hours. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 53 years, from the end of 1972, to reach this latest figure of 28 million .
It is four years since I retired from active parish ministry in March 2022. These days, though, about 100 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 or more people each week.
Today, I am very grateful to the real readers among those 28 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I remain grateful to the faithful core group of about 100 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each day.
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