2013 saw lots of legislative action, if not at the federal level, certainly at the state level. BillTrack50 saw lots of action too; we are proud to have served nearly three and a half million bills to our users this year, and given results on over a quarter of a million searches. Over the summer we upgraded our architecture, added servers, and have generally gotten ready to serve even more users in the coming year.
Let’s take a look at our users and what they has interested them this year.
First, a look at the geography of our users. Not surprisingly nearly all of our traffic is from the US, but people have come from all over:
As far as the US, you’ll see the usual suspects, but note, we are based in Denver, and are still pretty new, so a largish fraction of our paying customers, and thus our traffic, are here in town:
What are our users looking at? Well, mostly bills of course. But our blog has seen a nice uptick in traffic (thanks for visiting by the way!):
Here’s a look at how much traffic each state saw:
New York saw far and away the most interest. We just added DC recently, so that’s maybe not fair. NY has a geographic concentration of Bill Track 50 users, and a large number of bills introduced, so that makes sense. The rest of the states aren’t as obvious why they are ranked as they are, although I do know one particular tweet from a legislator in Texas did lead to an absolute avalanche for a little while.
Interest in bills increased as the sessions wore on, until most of the states were out of session. Surprisingly, although there was a dip right after, interest didn’t stay dramatically lower after sessions wrapped up:
Here’s another look at where our users come from:
We’ve seen a definite uptick in edu accounts this year, which we are excited about. Hello students and teachers! We would love for you to take our survey so we can learn more about you.
That said, “nursing”, from our new nursing student users, was a new entry as a top search term for us this year:
And here’s a word cloud of what bills our users actually wound up reading:
Health related topics were huge last year, this year, and I would fully expect they will be next year too. Thanks as always to the wonderful website wordle, which I use to create the word clouds.
And let’s wrap up with some top 10 lists for 2013.
Top 10 most read bills:
MN SF372 Workers compensation reinsurance association prefunded limit elimination
MN HF1521 Health records; adult children of a deceased patient added to the definition of patient.
TX SR96 Recognizing Kyle Sulak for his actions during his neighbors’ house fire.
IL HB5142 FREESTANDING EMERGENCY CENTER
CO HB1001 Advanced Industries Acceleration Act
US HCR26 Recommending the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Rafael Peralta.
NJ A154 Revises child pornography law.
TX HB3462 Relating to the board of hospital managers of the El Paso County Hospital District.
NY A08565 Provides credit to members of public retirement systems of the state for military service in certain hostilities in Afghanistan.
CO HB1254 Restorative Justice
Top 10 most clicked on legislators:
Mike Parson – (R) Missouri
Susan A. Bonilla – (D) California
Nancy Skinner – (D) California
Richard Pan – (D) California
Henry T. Perea – (D) California
Carol Liu – (D) California
Peter J. Abbate Jr. – (D) New York
Darrell S. Steinberg – (D) California
Loni Hancock – (D) California
Cathrynn Novich Brown – (R) New Mexico
Top 10 Bill Track 50 blog posts (check them out!):
www.biltrack50.com/blog/civil-rights/does-same-sex-marriage-threaten-religious-freedom/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/civil-rights/from-perverts-to-pranksters-problems-with-sex-offender-registries/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/in-the-news/states-consider-changes-to-stand-your-ground/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/uncategorized/public-funding-for-professional-sports/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/civil-rights/online-sex-trafficking/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/election/the-future-of-unions/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/civil-rights/can-we-lower-our-prison-population/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/election/comparing-state-legislatures-by-counting-bills/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/health-care/genetically-modified-food-labeling/
www.biltrack50.com/blog/civil-rights/gay-marriage-vs-religious-freedom-redux/
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 offers free tools for citizens to easily research legislators and bills across all 50 states and Congress. BillTrack50 also offers professional tools to help organizations with ongoing legislative and regulatory tracking, as well as easy ways to share information both internally and with the public.