Map of Speedtracktales V2.0 readership for first year
It was over a year ago whilst searching for some ISDT specific archive photo’s I was given a number of photos I had no need for. Such things are not items you can simply fling and I looked for a home to donate them to. I was pointed to Speedtracktales but on arriving found the site had gone, unknown to me the originator had come to the end of his ability to sustain the costs with maintaining the url and servers for a labour of love. Luckily some persons had sidled it away onto a free site where the contents could be seen. Eventually finding Taff Issacs who was the originator he had no way to edit further and my photos were not of much use. After a bit of correspondence I agreed to set up a new website and rehouse the collection so that it could be easily accessed by persons wishing to research the historic years of the International Six Says Trial before it changed its name to International Six Days Enduro in 1981.
On about the 11th April 2012 the first of the new pages was started taking about 2 weeks to set about transferring the content which was lucky as the original archive server was shut down just after that work was completed. From now on the site stands alone from any individual or body I am just the Janitor / Librarian of the worlds information. In order to fill many of the holes of information I have obtained though the generosity of many of the followers of the old site a number of important documents not available before and have also been hunting out and acquiring valuable material from places such as eBay. The future of the site is however very much in the hands of those reading it and contributing to fresh material filling in lost memories of the event.
With this year seeing both the 100th anniversary of the first ISDT as well as a similar anniversary for the first Tour De France it will hopefully be a great year to recall the past days, the heros and the friendliness between nations this competitive event achieved often at times of great trouble and hardship of wars and economic woes and can do more to encourage nations to work together in cooperation than to try to diminish each others value by the outdated notions of national superiority.
Hopefully the many people selling material on eBay will not be using the below list to often to set the value of materials they are putting on sale.
The wordpress service comes complete with hand admin stats logs which although not as good as Google Analytics do provide some useful information about what is popular and what people come to the site looking for. Below as a first birthday review I have complied a number of charts based on the popularity by visits of material or the number of search engine queries that were made.
The above image provides a guide where visitors came from if their IP address had a national ID. the below is a list of the top 10 nations visiting the site. If reading this, you are one of the non British readers, a special hello is extended to you.
UK
Germany
USA
Italy
France
Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Poland
The 10 most popular pages
Home Page
General History of ISDT
About
Rolf Witthoefts 1980 ISDT BMW
ISDT 1964
ISDT Tube
ISDT 1939
ISDT 1961
ISDT 1954
ISDT 1960
The search terms used by those finding the site through the popular search engines provides an idea of popularity of Events, Riders and Motorcycle Marques and Models
The ISDT event most appearing in search engine referrals was the very controversial ISDT 1939
Top 10 events via search engine referral
ISDT 1939 – Germany
ISDT 1953 – Czechoslovakia
ISDT 1964 – East Germany
ISDT 1952 – Austria
ISDT 1951 – Italy
ISDT 1971 – Isle of Man
ISDT 1913 – Carlisle
ISDT 1973 – USA
ISDT 1948 – Italy
ISDT 1974 – Italy
The top 10 riders from search engine referrals were
Ken Heanes
Herbert Schek
Georg Meier
Peter Bradley
Marjorie Cottle
Sebastian Nachtmann
Steve McQueen
Arthur Lampkin
Johnny Brittain
Bud Ekins
I am certainly not surprised at the popularity of Ken Heanes, the Germans and Steve McQueen but there were many great riders not there from the Golden era of the ISDT in the 1930′s and 1950′s.
The most popular search for bike make was BMW and the R68 being the most enquired about bike. Georg Meier a famous works BMW rider is also near the top of rider popularity stakes
Most popular Motorbike Make or Model Search terms
BMW
Triumph
MZ
Zundapp
BSA
Sunbeam
The run away winner was the BMW which sees by far a significantly higher numbers of queries. Apart from BMW popularity with big trail bikes, right now I think BMW is sitting on a potential gold mine if it were to release modified updated retro versions based on the simplicity of its 30′s and 50′s ISDT mounts because as far as models went the most popular model of bike by a mile is the BMW R68 which has a lot of fans followed by the R67 then R68. Triumph mostly picks up interest in the form of the later Cheney Triumphs although the Trophy models are popular. MZ and Zundapp are very popular and the surprise bike is the Sunbeam Sidecar as ridden by Peter Bradley as it would appear the rider and bike retain a popular standing as a legend of the sport. It will be interesting to see how these results change over the next few years as the site becomes more established.
