Expansion of Silver Chips Online continues

The year 2004 was a year of unprecedented growth and expansion for Silver Chips Online, as readership averaged 37,412 visitors a month and surpassed a total of 30,000 comments.

As of Feb. 1, Silver Chips Online has published 4,221 stories, 885 of which were posted since Aug. 31, 2004 - the beginning of this school year. During the same time period, readers left a total of 8,128 comments on stories, 7,226 of which were posted.

In its six years of history, Silver Chips Online has expanded from a team of six writers to a staff of over 40 reporters, editors, photographers and technical personnel. Currently, Silver Chips Online has won every online Marylander Award given by the Maryland Scholastic Press Association annually. In addition, Silver Chips Online won the 2004 Online Pacemaker Award, an honor that identifies this online high school newspaper as one of three best in the nation.

In fall 2003, Silver Chips Online was also added to Google's database of searchable newspapers and has appeared on the front page of Google News on several occasions.

Approximately 344,620 unique visitors visited the website during the ten months of 2004 when statistical software was installed. The vast majority of these readers are from the U.S.; however, Silver Chips Online also receives a substantial number of hits from foreign countries. Although the website's tracking software cannot identify the number of unique visitors from foreign countries, hits are still counted. Major foreign visiting countries include Canada (260,561 hits), Great Britain (166,822 hits), Australia (105,200 hits), the Netherlands (42240 hits), Singapore (20,745 hits), Japan (19,292 hits) and the Philippines (19,169 hits).

Minor foreign visiting countries include Tadjikistan (20 hits), Vanuatu (18 hits), Djibouti (20 hits), Micronesia (17 hits), Kiribati (14 hits) and Burundi (1 hit). In total, Silver Chips Online has received hits and page views from at least 178 countries – nearly every country in the world.

Silver Chips Online has also been referred to by at least 4,628 websites. The largest amount of traffic to the website, 35 percent, originates from the website mbhs.edu. However, the paper has been listed on sites ranging from Native Wire to Twin Cities Independent Media Center, from a thread where adults were encouraged to verbally attack a Silver Chips Online writer in their comments on Keep and Bear Arms to a website about the No Child Left Behind Act. These are just a few of the thousands of sites Silver Chips Online is listed on.