Patrick Comerford
The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me, and these figures passed the 29.5 million mark by late yesterday afternoon (28 March 2026).
This is the eighth time this month alone that the half-million figure in readership numbers has been passed, already reaching 29 million mark on Wednesday afternoon (25 March 2026), 28.5 million mark two days earlier (23 March 2026 ), 28 million on 20 March 2026, 27.5 million on16 March 2026, 27 million on 12 March 2026, 26.5 million on 3 March 2026, and 26 million at the beginning of the month (Sunday 1 March 2026). The number of hits on two days this month have been the highest daily figure I have ever recorded: 323,156 (yesterday, 27 March 2026), and 318,307 (1 March 2026).
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 nine or ten months. 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, and that figure has already been outpaced this month, with a total of over 4 million by mid-day today.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 8.8 million hits or visitors in 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 eight times this month alone. Half of the 29.5 million hits have been within the last nine or ten months, since mid-July.
Throughout last year and this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog, six were this month (March), three were in February, one was in January, and two were in January 2025:
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 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)
• 270,983 (25 March 2026)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 234,737 (26 March 2026)
• 228,931 (18 March 2026)
The number of readers continues to be overpowering, with the daily averages currently running at about 143,000 hits a day so far this month. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this figure of 29.5 million in context:
Countries like Mozambique, Nepal and Yemen, the state of Texas and cities such as Jakarta in Indonesia have populations of about 29.5 million – depending on who is doing the counting.
In terms of language, literacy and literature, about 29.5 million people speak Fulah (Senegalese), macrolanguage) Uzbek and the Algerian dialect of spoken Arabic as their first language, while Julia Donaldson, the best-selling children’s author known for The Gruffalo, has sold over 29.5 million books in the UK.
29,500 sq km is 29.5 million sq metres, and 29,500 km is 29.5 million metres.
Lake Malawi (also known as Lake Nyasa or Niassa) in East Africa has a surface area of about 29.5 to 29.6 sq km, making it the ninth largest freshwater lake in the world. It is a deep, rift valley lake bordering Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique, renowned for its immense biodiversity and depth of up to 700 metres.
Japan has a coastline of over 29,500 km.
29.5 million minutes is 56 years, 1 month and 1 day. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 56 years, from February 1970, to reach this latest figure of 29.5 million.
It is now four years since I retired from active parish ministry in March 2022. These days, though, about 100-120 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. A similar number are reading my current series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham each day. 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 29.5 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I remain grateful to the faithful core group of about 100-120 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each day.
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