Where DeafReaders are: Top States
 | By Tayler Mayer Sunday, May 6th, 2007 |
Recently, I thought about how DeafRead’s traffic statistics program, Google Analytics, could be a peek into the geographical diversification of the deaf community. If you’re like me, I’ve always been curious where deaf people are living. You will often hear how Rochester, New York has a good number of deaf people, but you ask yourself, “Where are they?!”
I had planned to break it down by cities. But as it turns out, it wasn’t a good sampling. Odenton, Maryland had more visits than Frederick, Maryland. (Hello there in Odenton!) I may be wrong but I’ve always heard Frederick has a large base of deaf Marylanders. So I decided to compile a list grouping visitors by states.
Washington DC is an impressive 3rd, considering its small area. One guess why. 
Do you think the following list is a good estimate of where deaf people live in the United States?
- California
- Maryland
- Washington D.C.
- Texas
- New York
- Minnesota
- Virginia
- Pennsylvania
- Florida
- Washington
- Indiana
- Illinois
- Massachusetts
- Oregon
- Michigan
- Arizona
- North Carolina
- New Jersey
- Georgia
- South Dakota
- Ohio
- Missouri
- Colorado
- Connecticut
Note: DeafRead gets international visitors but none of them ranked in the top 24.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:14 am
At least my state is in 12th place, hehehe. Yes, this is interesting trivia
. Let DeafRead GROW more!
May 6th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Cool! Thanks for letting us know! I was wondering who is the most deafreaders in state. It is good to see Texas on #4.
May 6th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Hmmm… guess I am a little surprised that Illinois doesn’t rank higher, considering that Chicago has a large Deaf Community.
I wonder if this list really reflects the Deaf population itself… or rather, that population of Deaf people who are computer savvy and thus familiar with the whole concept of vlogs/blogs? Truthfully, what percentage of the Deaf Community really reads DeafRead, and/or blogs/vlogs in general?
I do think this is an interesting list, but I’m not sure if it is reflective of the Deaf Community as a whole. I am not surprised about California, Maryland, and DC ranking in the top three – that’s kind of to be expected I think. Not only do they have large populations of Deaf people, but more importantly… they have large populations of Deaf Professionals, and I suspect it is this group that makes up the vast majority of DeafRead readers.
Not to sound like a snob or anything, but let’s be honest – how many Deaf Grassroots read DeafRead?
May 6th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I wonder how much of the California statistics are from Palo Alto? That’s where the Tmobile sidekick servers are, right?
May 6th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I think it’s because #1 California and #4 Texas are so big and populated that the simple number of deaf people living there overwhelms the other states, despite a lower Deaf-to-Hearing ratio.
I think that #2 Maryland and #3 Washington DC are the true winners because despite overall lower number of Deaf people there, we get so many hits from them. I think these visitors are our truly loyal DeadReaders
May 6th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I see DC as third, Maryland as Second and Virginia as Seventh. If combined Northern Virginia, DC, and two countires in Maryland (MC and PGC), it would be rank ONE. I believe that Washington, DC Metro area has highest ratio of well-educated deaf people in the Nation
May 6th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Virginia Beach
You know when you said, “Not to sound like a snob or anything, but let’s be honest – how many Deaf Grassroots read DeafRead?” You cannot just put in a disclaimer to protect yourself from sounding like a snob. You do. You may want to see Jay’s vlog on grassroots. Why do we need to separate grassroot deafies from other deafies? We need to stop using the word grassroot!
May 6th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Many thanks for sharing the internal statistics on the proporation of DeafRead.com readers and vloggers. I truly appreciate it very much.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog
rlmdeaf@hotmail.com
May 6th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
You have a point about grassroots not reading Deafread.com…every time I talk with community Deaf who otherwise do read the papers, go online regularly, and write letters, they have not heard of Deafread.com.
Perhaps what is needed is a big advertising campaign to raise awareness of this vital community resource. The more that read it, the larger our voice in the community.
May 6th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
How reliable is Google Analytics? How does it work? does it track IP addresses? If so, then it’s not reliable.
May 6th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
C, Google Analytics is one of the best, if not the best traffic analysis tool out there. Google bought Urchin, a San Diego based company and made it free to everyone. Before it was sold, Urchin charged $400 a month for the service. Google Analytics is pretty much the standard now.
May 6th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
HOW ABOUT NEBRASKA???????
May 6th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Census Rankings
1. ca
19. md
50. dc
2. tx
3. ny
21. mn
12. va
6. pa
4. fl
15. wa
14. in
05. il
13. ma
28. or
08. mi
20. az
11. nc
09. nj
10. ga
46. sd
7. oh
17. mo
24. co
29. ct
May 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
The state of Washington is #10 ?! I demand a recount!
May 6th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
*clueless noob raises her hand*
What exactly is a “grassroots deafie”?
Also, I live smack dab in the middle of one of the big geographical areas, but just about everyone I have met in real life has not heard of deafread.com.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
The number 14th of Oregon is good enuff.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I’m big fan of numbers ‘n ranks about analysis.
California (#1) is the home of DeafRead.com. My opinion that few of DeafRead human editors spend much of their time using this site (developing, blogging, etc) and spread their Deaf folks in California.
Wash DC (#3) where Gallaudet Deaf educators takes in place, and second home to DeafRead.com and are the favorite site to visit. Maryland (#2) and Virginia (#7) are pretty closer and connected to DC area. Don’t forget those also affected by C2I conference some time ago.
Texas (#4) is the largest state and Deaf web sites including deaf owned web hosting sites, crazywebhosting.com and deafnetwork.com
New York (#5) is the home of NTID/RIT. Enuff said.
I am surprised that Minnesota (#6) bestest out of the rest of top 24, I have no idea how special Deaf visitor visit DeafRead.
Surprising that my home state, Pennsylvania #8 made into top ten! It might be maybe from me (hee hee), to spread the word-of-the-mouth to my Deaf folks around Pittsburgh. Also, PA is between NTID/RIT and Gallaudet, and neighborhood of Maryland and New York.
Am surprised that South Dakota landed in #20, because larger deaf community who have job at CSD.. (Correct me wrong)
May 7th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Good analysis, daveynin!
May 8th, 2007 at 11:56 am
To Deaf Observer (and others) ~
Thank you for sharing your perspective regarding the word “grassroots” – you have given me some interesting food for thought.
I have not seen Jay’s vlog on this subject, if you or someone could provide a link, I would be interested in viewing it.
However, I have seen the word “grassroots” used by Deaf individuals recently, and it seems it is a term that is in use by the Deaf Community still. In fact, a reader just used that very word “grassroots” in a comment left on my blog today. Are we in fact trying to avoid this now? If so, I wasn’t aware of such.
Regardless of what you wish to call them, I do think it would be interesting if someone was to do some more research into the specific characteristics of our DeafRead readership – such as age groups, education level, employment, etc. While I am sure there is diversity amongst the readership, I suspect we will find that the average age is likely around 35, with a college diploma, holding a professional level job such as a teacher, etc.
Like I said… I’m not trying to be a snob, but only trying to be realistic about who makes up the greater percentage of our readership.
A
May 8th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Virginia- I suspect that there is a wide variance in our readership with a slight leaning towards the demographic characteristics that you mentioned.
I’ve had a few people mention to me personally who they know follow DeafRead religiously. These are often people who are professional, well known or occupy high-ranking positions. I know there are such people following what is being talked about on DeafRead.
They find DeafRead appealing because they are easily able to filter for the Deaf bloggers who excel at written analysis on various issues. They tend to avoid many of the vlogs since they are very busy and don’t have the time to sit down through several 5 minutes-long vlogs. They only check them out when the one of vlogs have very high view count or get raves from others (on the Top Ten vlogs list).
For those in our readership who have lower level of English language comprehension, they favor the vlogs by a wide margin over written blogs since it is in their natural language.
I suspect that majority of our readership are in the middle ground between these two extremes, by clicking on a mixture of blogs and vlogs. Don’t forget all the teachers who are including DeafRead as part of their classroom assignments and bringing many of their students to the site.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Oh, I forgot one more thing – which country is #1 international visitors in DeafRead.com? Am curious about this…
May 10th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Hi daveynin, here are the top ten countries…
1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Israel
6. Sweden
7. Japan
8. Denmark
9. Singapore
10. Germany
United States accounts for 92.7% of DeafRead traffic.