Raw data of Sting Activity

Data Tables 2003 - 2009

Statistics have to be analysed and the figures below illustrate the absolute number of unique visitors to the Insect Stings website each month of the year. However, with the great majority of the visitors arriving from search engines the site shows growth because:

1) The number of people with access to the internet has grown

2) The ranking of the site on the search engines has generally improved.

These absoute figures are therefore statistically of limited benefit.

Absolute Numbers	2003*	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
January	1,407	2,220	2,677	3,452	3,086	5,168	6,772	5,103
February	1,535	3,148	2,911	3,393	2,555	5,293	6,204	5,030
March	2,499	7,915	4,191	4,811	4,078	6,670	9,180
April	4,048	9,843	7,371	7,933	8,332	10,720	13,694
May	5,480	17,467	9,630	10,342	10,704	16,932	16,467
June	6,854	20,501	14,539	14,113	16,508	18,554	23,598
July	19,667	20,606	23,287	29,231	24,979	30,420	40,916
August	16,105	26,733	22,451	26,896	30,134	45,308	74,386
September	10,111	16,955	15,583	15,912	22,434	26,488	40,074
October	5,400	8,993	9,199	9,573	13,508	15,400	21,177
November	2,559	4,256	5,199	4,605	7,316	8,717	11,526
December	1,631	2,112	2,625	2,590	4,078	4,783	5,205

A re-basing of these figures where January = 100 gives a somewhat more accurate illustration for each month when comparing it to previous months:

Visitors (January = 100)	2003*	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
January	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
February	109	142	109	98	83	102	92	99
March	178	357	157	139	132	129	136
April	288	443	275	230	270	207	202
May	389	787	360	300	347	328	243
June	487	923	543	409	535	359	348
July	1398	928	870	847	809	589	604
August	1145	1204	839	779	976	877	1098
September	719	764	582	461	727	513	592
October	384	405	344	277	438	298	313
November	182	192	194	133	212	169	170
December	116	95	98	75	118	93	77

In order to compare year it is also helpful to use a cumulative table where January = 100 - this gives a running cumulative count of sting activity and shows how good or bad a year it has been:

Cumulative Visitors	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
January	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100
February	209	242	209	198	183	202	192	199
March	387	598	365	338	315	331	327
April	674	1,042	641	567	585	539	529
May	1,064	1,829	1,000	867	932	867	773
June	1,551	2,752	1,543	1,276	1,467	1,226	1,121
July	2,949	3,680	2,413	2,123	2,276	1,814	1,725
August	4,093	4,884	3,252	2,902	3,253	2,691	2,824
September	4,812	5,648	3,834	3,363	3,980	3,203	3,415
October	5,196	6,053	4,178	3,640	4,417	3,501	3,728
November	5,378	6,245	4,372	3,773	4,629	3,670	3,898
December	5,494	6,340	4,470	3,849	4,747	3,763	3,975

* 2003 was the sites first full year and so its early first year was a "bedding-in" year and we believe statistically not as helpful as subsequent years.

All statistical data is taken from the website www.insectstings.co.uk which is probably the leading website for insect sting related terms on the internet. The sheer volume of statistical data is therefore helpful when it comes to determining the level of insect stings activity in the environment and in particular the UK. However, there are inevitably limitations and some of these are indicated below:

Geographical Sample - we calculate that the for the year as a whole the site typically has 70% of visitors from the UK , 21% from North America, and the balance of 9% from approximately 85 other countries. Whilst the UK therefore dominates the results it is not the sole source of sting activity and we will be looking to some way of filtering non-UK results out of the system in the future.

Insect Sting Activity - not every searcher arrives on the website as a result of an insect sting - however the majority do and the top 15 terms all contain the term "sting" and account for 56% of traffic. In a typical year over 200,000 searchers arrive at the site using in excess of 5,000 different search terms but we would estimate that some 80-85% of searchers arrive at the site because of a sting incident. When there are comparatively few stings in January and February the traffic levels are some 3,000 per month - indicating a non-sting prompted visitor rate of about 18% for the year as a whole.

Underlying Web Activity - more and more people with web access means that each year more people will have access to the website and this would indicate that the site should see an underlying trend upwards in activity. In order to mitigate this to some degree we have rebased each year with January = 100 so that we can see trends within years as well as compare them meaningfully to other years.

Local Population - if there is a wasp nest or bee hive nearby then you have a higher chance of being stung so do not use this data as a predictor of sting risk in your locality. This site offers a UK wide sting risk measurement - an overall picture rather than a predictor for a limited area.

Insect Stings Activity Data

Interesting Resource

Data Tables 2003 - 2009