7 Blogging Statistics Rules - There is Life After Page Views
A lot of folks spend a lot of time analyzing blog traffic. Josh Bancroft wrote a very good article in January about "Site Statistics I Care About as a Blogger" where he talks about the various and sundry statistics that Google Analytics provides and how you should read them. Ultimately this all comes down to two things:
- Do you care who reads your blog?
and if so
- Will you change your behavior given statistics on who reads you blog?
I used to care deeply about my blog, the way one cares about tending a garden. I'd watch it every day and revel in each new visitor. Now, after almost 6 years of pretty active blogging, I now think more about people than pageviews. You can't trust a referrer or a trackback.
Rule #1 of blogging stats: The only way to know if a human is reading your blog is if they are talking with you.
Given that realization, I look at my stats maybe twice a month, and I'm most interested in seeing what posts folks really liked that month. I used to (maybe 3 years ago) look at every referrer and stats daily, but then I realized that my personal litmus test for my blog's success or failure is comments and other folks' blog posts, and nothing else.
I feel like we've (that means me and you, Dear Reader) have a little community here. When you comment, I am happy because I feel more connected to the conversation as this blog is my 3rd place. I blog to be social, not to have a soapbox. I'm even happier when the comments are better and more substantive than the post itself. I would take half the traffic and twice the comments any day. If you're a "lurker," why not join the conversation?
Anyway, some blogs use their stats as a measuring stick (to measure all sorts of thing) and some keep them secret. I was thinking I should just publish mine occasionally, and perhaps others would do the same. You can't trust stats, usually, as on never knows how many bots are visiting their site spidering. I know that Google Analytics and any analytics package worth its salt filters out spiders. DasBlog, for example, doesn't do this, so the statistics you'll get from DasBlog (any many other blogging engines) will be artificially inflated. The same thing happens if you just run a script over your web server logs looking for HTTP GETs.
Rule #2 of blogging stats: HTTP GETs don't equal warm bodies.
I was "tweeting" with Brendan Tomkins of CodeBetter about this and he thought it would foster a sense of openness and give everyone in our tiny slice of the blogosphere an idea of who's out here.
There's a little FeedBurner chicklet up there in my blog that shows a ballpark number of how many subscribers I have. Here's more on how FeedBurner comes up with that number. That number goes up and down based from day to day by 10-20%, depending on such mundane things as whether your computer was on to make the request.
I have only had Google Analytics on since March 3rd so I'm not sure how accurate this data is, but here's the stats since then. There seems to have been some kind of ramping up process, so this is about a 2.5 to 3 week (not a full month) slice, as I'm not sure how to count the ramp-up days.
Notice the regular dips? Those are weekends. The peaks? Mondays. Folks love to read on Mondays.
Here's another rollup:
Rule #3 of blogging stats: PageViews don't equal warm bodies.
See the difference between Visits and PageViews? You can't take a number like PageViews and correlate that directly to "# of humans" although you'll see that a lot when folks quote stats.
Rule #4 of blogging stats: You have a worldwide audience!
(Hi Sri Lanka!)
Folks come from all over!
...using lots of different OS's...
Rule #5 of blogging stats: If it can browse, someone will visit you with it.
Not sure what to do with the 2,200 visits by 800x600 people. I have made an effort to make the site mobile friendly though.
Rule #6 of blogging stats: People like what they like
This I thought was really interesting - the number of URLs (posts/comments URIs) views vs. number of views, and the top pages for this ~3 week period. The Programmer Themes Gallery is popular this month, as is the tools list and my Outlook GTD post. Also, I can see that folks do enjoy the Weekly Source Code, so I know I'll keep doing that. I can also see that referrals via search sent 94,850 total visits via 64,239 keywords over this period.
It's funny, the posts that I like writing, the deep technical stuff, programming languages stuff, it seems like no one cares about. I think this is the Digg influence. If you post a Gallery or a List or anything post with a Prime Number and the word "Rules" in the title, you'll get traffic. You post smart, compelling content, you need to be wicked smart before folks take note. That said, here's rule #6.5
Rule #6.5 of blogging stats: Blog for you.
You can certainly use these statistics make decisions on what to blog and only blog things that the largest number of people would like, but "meh." Would you really want to do that? I continue to blog about Baby Sign Language and Diabetes and I get no traffic for those topics. Ultimately, I blog for me, and that's why I keep this blog on my own server where the content is my own.
I also use FeedBurner, which provides RSS-specific and site specific stats, and it sometimes offers differing stats. This might have to do with how many people browse with Javascript turned off (gasp!) or use an Ad Blocker like IE7Pro or AdBlock for Firefox. FeedBurner has an interesting view that breaks down the details of how many folks subscribe in what reader.
Rule #7 from Mark Twain: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Don't trust any of these values. If you've got an engaged audience, they'll comment, blog, talk, chat, twitter, email and generally engage in the conversation. All else is poo.
I've only been using Google Analytics for a few weeks, as you can see, but I think I'll install Microsoft adCenter's Analytics Package side-by-side and do some comparisons and see what kinds of stats I can get out out of it.
As Josh so rightly said, and I'll steal borrow from him, if you ever want to flatter me, just subscribe to my feed (and leave comments!)
Well, that's all I've got, so Dear Reader, Blog your Stats and let's learn from each other what works.
Related Posts
- The Developer Theory of the Third Place
- Twitter: The Uselessfulness of Micro-blogging
- Slashdot Traffic, Site Statistics and dasBlog Performance
- Blog Stats are Confusing - GETs, Views, User-Agents, Readers, Eyeballs
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Great post!
Oh yeah, the rest of the post was good, too. :-)
Scoble said this week that he'll go wherever the conversation goes. I wonder where it's going next?
Paul - I like that, each post does have a little life of its own.
You can gather a variety of demographic data from stats, but with 25,000 RSS readers, and a whole 6 of us who have commented (thus far), you probably don't know much about your RSS readerbase at all.
but great stuff to learn from!
separate stats that count for about ten+ thousand views per day. I know as much or more about RSS Traffic (to the item level) as I do about web.
I always like to be able to read some personal stuff about bloggers whom I read regularly. I suppose it helps in getting to know the whole person. Othewrise you remain a faceless non-person uber-guru. I like the fact that the people whose opinions I respect are real live people with real joys and real problems. It shows that you belong to the same species as I do, and if you can solve some esoteric technical problem, then maybe I can too.
So, please keep blogging about family, sign language and diabetes.
I found your blog via your tools list (which I come back to like a kid looking for desert every once in a while), but stay with you for you VisualStudio post and just general admiration for you as a human. Your diabetes posts (especially the altimeter one) helped me to understand some friends whos 10 year old son has the disease, and your WAF gave me a new insight to my wife, so those type of articles are very worthwhile to me.
I am clearly a lurker, but despite the lack of comments, let me assure you that I find your blog excellent. You have a nice mix - a worthwhile mix - that enriches me in various ways.
Gracias,
Ed
I've been running my blog for about nine months and get less visitors per month than you do per day. Only a fraction of my posts get even one response. For small-scale folk like myself, the number of page hits is all we have as a guide to the number of visitors. Whether those visitors are real people or not isn't that important. Most of my visitors are friends and colleagues after all. In fact a visit from a search engine is probably more useful in terms of eventually getting new visitors than a visit from a friend! :D
I've bookmarked this page though as it'll no doubt be a lot more useful if and when my readership grows significantly.
Thanks again, and have a nice day !
François
There is one body right here, your content is great. My favorite are the pods, original posts, & weekly source code reviews.
Hanselminutes Fan,
Catto
Greetings from Iceland
Reading the blog has become a part of my daily routine regardless of the subject matter.
Thanks.
It's funny, the posts that I like writing, the deep technical stuff, programming languages stuff, it seems like no one cares about.
I think I speak for lurkers everywhere when I say keep the technical stuff coming! (As someone considering parenthood, I think the BSL stuff is great too :)
Can you explain how you do this trick with the "hidden 1 pixel graphic in each post so I know which posts are viewed in any aggregator that loads images. I know which items are forwarded as well. All those views are separate stats that count for about ten+ thousand views per day. I know as much or more about RSS Traffic (to the item level) as I do about web"?
Just wanted to say thanks. I became a reader of your blog about a year ago. I like the fact that you include the full article txt in the RSS feed since I use google reader and I don't really like the blogs that have just a short paragraph and expect me to go to the site to read more.
I follow 99 subscriptions right now and I begin my day reading all the posts. I want to read everything in one place so I use Google Reader (before that was newsgator via Outlook). So thank you for having your blog so accessiable. Your blog is one of my favorites and I look forward to each new well thought out and interesting post.
I'll try to become lesss of a lurker and more of a participant in your community.
"It's funny, the posts that I like writing, the deep technical stuff, programming languages stuff, it seems like no one cares about"
Please don't stop with the highly technical articles. Sometimes they zoom right over my head, but that usually prompts/helps me to research more. Either way, I always learn something. Keep up the good work Scott.
Anyway, big fan, occaisional poster here standing up to be counted as a body.
w00t
Ryan
But if I may also add, looking at stats will give a glimpse of how you make other people benefit from your blog which is to me as equally important. I simply don't want myself to benefit from my own notes but somehow hoping that one way or another it might benefit another soul.
I don't even want to start on how many subscribers (i do have a few) I have and how many comments I have in my blog as of now (a clue = "1" and guess what I posted that comment myself). But that will not stop me from blogging because one of my goals in the first place is to take notes for myself (having no readers if ever would not affect that) and secondly, hey I have a few (not just one soul) who somehow (hopefully) benefits from one of my posts or two and I'm happy with that. It would be nice and ideal if there was more comment but who knows they must just be "lurkers".
Also, seeing someone from somewhere half the globe actually read some of your posts (and have some returning users) is more than enough reason to smile. And "actually read" is actually just an assumption but I think somehow the "Time spent on a page" or "time spent on the site" might also be worthy of mention.
Blog in any way to share anything that may be beneficial to others but definitely keep blogging for yourself.
Been a lurker for sometime but love your blogs (who doesn't) so keep them coming... :)
--Dave
I've avoided posting stats or displaying a feedburner chicklet on my site since I only have six readers or so. Mabye, I'll post stats in the future, but right now they're not really helping anyone out so there's no point. It's surpising to me to see visitors from all over the world finding my blog. This Internet thing sure has changed communication.
We use Google analytics for our customer sites (not blogs) but really treat all but the OS/Browser versions etc. as potentially meaningless. Activity on your site whether it's comments, sales, sign-ups whatever will always be the marker by which you should judge whether you are doing a good job - or not.
But you're right, it can be flattering to get past the x hundred/thousand/million 'real' people coming to see what you are offering, that's what this is all about right? People.
Really great stuff in here Scott - I'm just pissed at myself for not finding this earlier.
One of the best things I like about hanselman.com is the layout, especially the fonts. No other blog has this kinda layout that's fascinated me for so long :)
Oh, and Scott, don't worry about blogging what you want compared to what's popular. I've been a subscriber to your podcast for a year now, and being the non-programmer guy that i am, i do enjoy the less technical and less programming-centric podcasts more. There are even times (gasp!) that i've skipped a podcast ten or twenty minutes in the programming when i realized that hearing about the specifics of data binding isn't going to make my life any richer. Still i keep myself subscribed because i may get an idea about the idea you're podcasting about. Like that even if your testing has full code coverage, you've only tested your code given those specific parameters. It's like science. Having tested something shows that some thing or other works (or fails) given those specific test settings and one may at most extrapolate from there.
Anyway, i just thought i wanted to stop by and say hi and thanks before heading back to my blog to say hi and come back to my single visitors from Slovenia, Czech Republic, Cambodia, Serbia and Montenegro, Iceland, Timor-Leste (the country previously known as East Timor), Morocco and Syria! It's kind of a revival from the times i checked the httpd logs of my first topical web pages (back in the early 90's) to see that i have actual visitors from abroad :)
But it is part of my new year's resolution to be more active in online communities (I'm speaking about the new Persian year, 1387, which started 10 days ago).
Anyway, thanks for your great content, I sure enjoy reading every one of your blog posts; you're in my essentials folder in Google Reader.
PS. Plz don't use the word "lurker" again! :(
Just what you are doing: keep your daily (blog) content to the left, and your sidebar to the right (where viewers can sidescroll if they choose.) I'm an 80x600 person, and this set up suits me just fine.
: )
I think you are fun to read, you write without care, and that is pretty nice.
Anyway, I wouldn't change it, so, whatever you're doing, just keep doing it. :)
- Posted by zi255_TrackBackBot
Say, I was reading about your web site stats and was wondering if you had any ideas about using Googles web optimizer? Maybe your already using it. I'd be curious about your thoughts.
Thanks,
Mike
Comments are closed.
In the end though, absolutely agree that engaging in conversation is the ultimate measure. Can't get enough of that!