Mint trending towards #1 on DistroWatch?

[Kittum]

I was just looking at the "Page Hit Ranking" on DistroWatch today and I noticed a few things that made me wonder.
On the 6 month Data Range I seen

Ubuntu at #1 with 2083 Page hits per day and rising.
Mint at #2 with 1467 Page hits per day and rising.
Debian at #5 with 1073 Page hits per day and dropping.
MEPIS at #18 with 415 Page hits per day and stable.

When I change the data range to 3 months I see

Ubuntu at #1 with 2i41 Page hits per day and dropping.
Mint at #2 with 1631 Page hits per day and rising.
Debian at #5 with 1157 Page hits per day and stable.
MEPIS at #18 with 426 Page hits per day and stable.

Hmmm..we can see that Ubuntu had a gain of 58 and trending down while Mint had a gain of 164 and trending up.
Did Ubuntu have a regular release in during this 3 month span in October? If so that would explain their increase of page hits in this time frame but not the downward trend unless somebody else was gaining the attention of would be Ubuntu "page hitters".

At 30 days data range I see

Ubuntu at #1 with 1848 Page hits per day and still dropping.
Mint at #2 with 1546 Page hits per day and rising.
Debian at #5 with 1138 Page hits per day and dropping.
MEPIS at #28 with 350 Page hits per day and stable.

I am going to wild guess that the holidays had an impact on this data set. Note the gap between #1 and #2 had closed with a gap of 510 in the 3 month data set to a gap of 302 in the 30 day data set. Note that # 5 had held a strong base line and that is my control variable in this case.

In the 7 day data range, with the Christmas holiday mostly out of the equation, I see a top switch.

Mint at #1 with 2132 Page hits per day and rising.
Ubuntu at #2 with 1626 Page hits per day and rising.
Debian at #5 with 1025 Page hits per day and dropping.
MEPIS at #28 with 329 Page hits per day and rising.

What is your take on this?

[proxima_centauri]

Linux Mint 10 was released in November, and a new release of Linux Mint Debian Edition just last week.

That could account for some of the spike in user clicks on Distrowatch.

[Kittum]

Linux Mint 10 was released in November, and a new release of Linux Mint Debian Edition just last week.

That could account for some of the spike in user clicks on Distrowatch.

I tend to believe that is some of the case but I don't believe it is the entire story.

[jesica]