The Popularity of Perl in 2014
A year ago I've published an article called The Popularity of Perl in 2013
It contained a list of sites with their Alexa ranking and a few site with information from their Google Analytics.
This is an updated version of that report.
The Popularity of Perl
There are many ways to measure the popularity of a programming language. We are going to look at 3 measurements here:
- Perl Weekly subscribers
- Alexa
- Google Analytics of search.cpan.org, blogs.perl.org, MetaCPAN, and Perl Maven
Perl Weekly
The Perl Weekly website itself does not get a lot of visitors. What is interesting there is the number of subscribers. It grew from 4156 on 1 January 2013 to 5103 on 31 December 2013 and to 5645. on 31 December 2014. It's Google+ page was circled by 4,066 people on 1 January 2014 and 4,874 on 1 January 2015. (I don't seem to have the number from the beginning og 2013.)
These numbers are, of course, more indicative to the popularity of the Perl Weekly, than that of Perl.
Alexa
The Alexa rankings provide a proximate ranking of web sites. It has big and strange fluctuations, but lacking more exact data, it can be a good indicator for the relative popularity of web sites.
Ordered according to their position on 1 Jan 2015.
Perl
| site | 15 Jan 2013 | 1 Jan 2014 | 1 Jan 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| cpan.org | 10,222 | 8,807 | 14,428 |
| perl.org | 18,634 | 14,772 | 21,893 |
| perlmonks.org | 21,521 | 21,273 | 26,500 |
| metacpan.org | 143,975 | 73,877 | 69,477 |
| perlmaven.com | 679,764 | 199,901 | 99,531 |
| munin-monitoring.org | 106,196 | 89,993 | 129,329 |
| bugzilla.org | 94,309 | 91,851 | 148,722 |
| movabletype.org | 158,640 | 125,646 | 160,519 |
| perl.com | 189,149 | 200,674 | 271,028 |
| perlmeme.org | - | 204,513 | 275,253 |
| otrs.org | 187,82 | 130,611 | 327,586 |
| mojolicio.us | 614,109 | 515,543 | 335,675 |
| cpantesters.org | 553,281 | 265,792 | 344,731 |
| dadamailproject.com | 153,316 | 135,448 | 357,760 |
| perlgeek.de | 1,244,368 | 476,736 | 398,956 |
| site | 15 Jan 2013 | 1 Jan 2014 | 1 Jan 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| strawberryperl.com | 421,282 | 354,047 | 406,097 |
| foswiki.org | 440,926 | 379,461 | 421,097 |
| perltricks.com | - | 910,000 | 421,194 |
| www.perlfect.com | - | 351,860 | 427,574 |
| template-toolkit.org | 535,891 | 407,008 | 483,630 |
| webgui.org | 420,044 | 669,840 | 542,179 |
| catalystframework.org | 679,637 | 447,718 | 563,539 |
| perl-community.de | 465,767 | 259,690 | 623,151 |
| perldancer.org | 612,468 | 566,055 | 723,862 |
| perlide.org | 941,509 | 799,919 | 763,733 |
| pm.org | 382,919 | 447,865 | 765,765 |
| perlfoundation.org | 403,687 | 820,284 | 895,179 |
| www.misc-perl-info.com | - | 597,487 | 963,995 |
| perl6.org | 956,529 | 1,597,330 | 970,857 |
| modernperlbooks.com | 646,809 | 552,230 | 1,173,818 |
| perl-begin.org | 851,904 | 3,236,437 | 1,194,368 |
| perlhacks.com | 4,922,207 | 1,440,058 | 1,640,884 |
| dwimperl.com | - | - | 1,759,392 |
| perlbuzz.com | 1,155,833 | 752,738 | 2,714,571 |
| perl-tutorial.org | 1,260,631 | 1,814,361 | 4,126,720 |
| perlnews.org | 2,604,882 | 954,340 | 4,221,820 |
| perl6maven.com | - | - | 7,301,179 |
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provide a much more accurate measurements of number of visitors and page-views. I have access to the data of several major, and a few smaller Perl-related sites.
Number of pageviews
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 2,183,610 | 1,940,160 | -11.2% |
| search.cpan.org | 1,758,977 | 1,363,260 | -22.5% |
| metacpan.org | 424,633 | 576,900 | 35.8% |
| perlmaven.com | 116,574 | 250,970 | 115.0% |
| blogs.perl.org | 59,524 | 72,465 | 22.0% |
| strawberryperl.com | 40,606 | 40,547 | 0.0% |
| padre.perlide.org | 27,585 | 27,705 | 0.0% |
| dwimperl.com | 10,942 | 10,221 | -6.6% |
| perldancer.org | 9,916 | 9,172 | 0.0% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 6,667 | 9,938 | 50.0% |
| perl6maven.com | 1,561 | 3,983 | 155.0% |
Number of sessions
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 837,856 | 771,615 | -7.9% |
| search.cpan.org | 700,382 | 597,417 | -14.8% |
| metacpan.org | 137,474 | 174,198 | 27.0% |
| perlmaven.com | 84,810 | 184,000 | 116.0% |
| blogs.perl.org | 44,195 | 52,012 | 18.2% |
| strawberryperl.com | 31,690 | 31,329 | 0.0% |
| padre.perlide.org | 10,333 | 11,360 | 9.7% |
| dwimperl.com | 7,813 | 7,368 | -6.5% |
| perldancer.org | 5,214 | 5,388 | 0.0% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 3,568 | 4,421 | 25.7% |
| perl6maven.com | 846 | 1,445 | 70.0% |
Number of users
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 485,503 | 449,333 | -7.5% |
| search.cpan.org | 403,164 | 357,156 | -11.5% |
| metacpan.org | 82,339 | 92,177 | 12.2% |
| perlmaven.com | 59,728 | 117,082 | 98.3% |
| blogs.perl.org | 31,859 | 36,494 | 14.1% |
| strawberryperl.com | 27,337 | 26,408 | -3.3% |
| padre.perlide.org | 8,531 | 9,559 | 11.7% |
| dwimperl.com | 6,638 | 6,784 | 1.5% |
| perldancer.org | 4,027 | 4,074 | 0.0% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 2,138 | 2,180 | 0.0% |
| perl6maven.com | 680 | 1,169 | 72.0% |
CPAN total is metacpan.org+search.cpan.org
Data from perl.org and perl.com
I don't have access to the Google Analytics of the other perl.org sites, but I got some data from Ask Bjørn Hansen, one of the owners and admins of perl.org. (Beginning of February 2014).
- perldoc.perl.org has about a million page views a month over ~500k visits.
- perl.org 130k visits.
- perl.com 70k visits.
The rest of the sites have less than 50k visitors a month.
At a glance then except for learn.perl.org traffic has been pretty much flat for 4-5 years.
learn.perl.org has been growing from ~12k/month to 40k visits a month over the last 4 years, though likely that's related to the redesign a few years ago.
See also relative popularity of programming languages in 2014.