Here are the last few weeks of the "visitor" metric per Google Analytics, on each Trilogy site:

meta.stackoverflow.com

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8907/analyticsvisitorsmeta.png

serverfault.com

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/503/analyticsvisitorssf.png

superuser.com

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/6666/analyticsvisitorssu.png

stackoverflow.com

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/7807/analyticsvisitorsso.png

They are ordered in terms of least visitors to most visitors. Stack Overflow is the blockbuster here. Which makes sense, as it's the oldest, and the site that is most in tune with the Joel on Software and Coding Horror audiences we originally started with.

Meta is only included for completeness; we don't actually need any particular traffic level there (aka, "here") due to the nature of the content.

I am not showing the larger trend graphs here, but the deeper concern is that Super User and Server Fault are not growing much (if at all) over time. Google traffic levels are one sign of a site's maturity:

• SO has 90% google traffic
• SF has 77% google traffic
• SU has 67% google traffic

So we're not quite "mature" yet, but we're getting close.

I am not sure we've done a good job of reaching out to the power user (superuser.com) and sysadmin/it pro (serverfault.com) communities to make sure they're at least aware of these sites.

Why this matters: I worry that if we don't attract a critical mass of users there, questions and answers will languish. They don't need to be enormous, I just want them to be useful. And that implies some growth, at least!

So, this is my question to you: what should we be doing to reach out to the power user and sysadmin communities? How can we attract more of the kinds of power users, sysadmins, and IT pros that we'd like to see asking and answering questions on superuser.com and serverfault.com?

Suggestions welcome.