Chapter 19
Measuring Blog Presence
In This Chapter
Figuring out what web statistics tell you
Checking out good statistics-tracking tools
Tracking the blogosphere for keywords and topics
For a moment, picture your new blog running just the way you want it. The graphics are pretty, you're blogging every day, and comments are rolling in. Everything looks perfect, and you seem to be well on your way to a successful blogging career. But wait! For no real reason, over a few weeks, the number of comments left on your blog each day starts to decrease. Your visitor numbers are down. You don't find an obvious explanation, and you can't imagine why your readership is disappearing so quickly!
If you ever find yourself in this type of situation, you may start to ask yourself questions such as “How many visitors do I have every day, anyway?” or “How many of my visitors have been here before?”
It's time to understand your web traffic statistics. You, as a blogger, may find web stats especially important because, in contrast to the way a static website generates traffic, your audience numbers are affected each time you post.
You must pay attention to how your blog is performing on the Internet, but doing so can be confusing and boring. Spending an afternoon peering at web stats, especially if you don't know what you're looking for, can be a tedious experience. It's like . . . well, it's like watching paint dry. But it doesn't have to be as painful as it sounds. Web statistics are very geeky, but thankfully you can choose from services available to bloggers (and webmasters in general) that allow you to track your blog's success in interesting and informative ways by using a friendly interface.
Exploring the Power of Statistics
Even if you like the way your blog is performing, you should take a look at your blog stats once in a while. Some bloggers look at them daily to see what kinds of visitors appeared on their blogging radar overnight; some bloggers check their stats once a week or once a month. Whichever pattern you choose, keep a good handle on your statistics. Knowing how many visitors you have can help you improve your blog in the future, making it even more popular.
For an example of what a typical web-stats tool looks like, check out StatCounter's measurement of the Find-A-Sweetheart website (www.find-a-sweetheart.com) in Figure 19-1. (You have to be logged in if you want to view stats on StatCounter.)
Figure 19-1: Blogger Kathryn Lord uses StatCounter to track her site's web stats.
Although tracking your site's statistics is a good idea in case you might sometime require that information, most bloggers are hobby bloggers, not professional bloggers. The bottom line is that you should blog in a way that makes you happy, which may mean not worrying about who is coming to your blog and why.
Using web statistics, you can track
- What countries your web visitors are surfing from
- How long visitors stay
- How many visitors check out your site for the first time
- How many visitors have been to your blog before
- What pages your visitors start their visit on
- What pages visitors end their visit on
- What sites send visitors to you
- What search words visitors use to find your site
- What browsers your visitors use
- What kind of computers your visitors use to surf the web
- What screen resolutions your visitors set their monitors to
With some of the more advanced web analytics software, you can see what pages are the least popular, find out how search engines handle your blog, and even see what errors or missing pages your visitors get when they try to access parts of your site. (If you have removed an old blog post or renamed a posting, your statistics will tell you which pages are missing.) A lot of bloggers particularly want to know what websites are sending visitors to their blogs so that they can figure out where to invest time and energy in comments and discussion forums.
Knowing even a little bit about your traffic can help you make all kinds of strategic decisions about your blog, from what kind of design to use to the subject of a post.
Blog stats become even more useful when you begin analyzing them. Web analytics are the trends that your statistical or log software shows you. Some traffic software helps break down these trends for you, but the most basic software simply displays the raw data about how visitors use your site and lets you draw the conclusions. When people talk about web analytics, they're referring to the process that you undertake when you're looking through those stats and logs to figure out what visitors are doing on your website. Commonly, you look for trends about what content the visitors view, how often they visit, and what other sites direct traffic your way.
Pay close attention to your website logs so that you can chart what your users are doing over time. You can see what your site visitors are reading and what keeps them coming back for more. You can then use this information for a variety of purposes (such as deciding what to blog about). The following examples illustrate how gathering your blog's statistics and interpreting them can be useful:
- You notice that you have a large bunch of readers coming from a particular country (see Figure
19-2), and you don't live in that country. In this case, you should see what pages those visitors are viewing — and determine why they're coming to your site. You can then write more to attract additional visitors who have similar tastes. In fact, noticing a trend such as this one might help you focus on a core audience that you didn't even know about. You can even redefine what you do with your blog in the future.
Figure 19-2: Track where your visitors live by using a stat program such as StatCounter.
- You have ads on your blog (see Chapter 20), and more people are clicking a certain type of advertisement. If you take the time, you can see what kinds of visitors are clicking advertisements on your site (if you have any ads, of course). You can use information about what ads your visitors click to sell ad space to certain advertisers.
You may have trouble staying away from your blog's web stats, and you might want to check them daily. But don't forget that you have a blog to run, which requires that you focus on the quality of the content you produce for your community. Try to avoid an obsession over your web statistics because no amount of tinkering with web analytics can make your blog popular. Your content is the only thing that can accomplish that feat.
Knowing What the Statistics Mean
To understand what you're looking at when you scan your web statistics or server logs, you need to know a series of terms. Most web analytics software uses these terms, but you should always check to see how the software's creators define measurements. Web analytics software tends to use these terms in the same way, but not always. I cover the most vital terms in the following sections.
You'll run into more terms than the ones I cover in this chapter, but the most important ones for bloggers are page views, unique visitors, and repeat visitors. Together, these three statistics give you the most accurate picture of how many visitors your blog receives and what they do while they visit.
I also introduce you to what the term hits means, which new bloggers often find misleading, and how statistics can help you resolve errors on your blog.
Hits
A hit is an official request from a web browser for a file from the web server. The file can be an HTML file or a movie file. Essentially, accessing any file available on a web server to the surfing public counts as a hit.
Any given web page causes multiple hits on the server when it loads, even though it's only one page. Multiple files are actually called to display the page: the HTML file; any associated style documents; and all the image files. If an HTML file has five images, it counts as six hits — one for the HTML file and five for each image.
A lot of people think that hits indicate the number of website visitors or even the number of pages viewed, but hits don't even come close to measuring those kinds of figures. Hits are pretty meaningless if you're trying to understand how many visitors you have, but they can help you get a feel for the traffic load that your site puts on the web server.
Page views
A page view is normally defined as a page within a web server log. If the web browser requests an HTML file, the log records that as a single request, even if the server needs several files to display the page. Each time the web browser loads a page of your site, it counts as a page view. Page views are a valuable measurement because you can get a better understanding of how people actually use your site.
In Figure 19-3, you can see an example of how StatCounter displays page view data.
Figure 19-3: StatCounter breaks down page loads for a given day.
Advertisers are often very interested in the number of page views on a website (more is better), and most bloggers consider a high page-view number something to brag about.
Unique visitors
Unique visitors are just what they sound like — individual visitors who come to your website. The analytics software counts them only once, no matter how many pages they view or how many times they visit. When you're looking at the number of unique visitors your blog gets, take a look at what time period the analytics software refers to. Fifty unique visitors in one day is, of course, a much bigger deal than 50 unique visitors in a month.
Repeat visitors
Repeat visitors are blog readers who visit your site on more than one occasion and, usually, visit multiple pages. Pay attention, just as with unique visitors, to the time period this repeat-visitor number covers.
In Figure 19-4, you can see a graph that breaks down the percentages of first-time visitors to repeat visitors on the web statistics tool StatCounter.
Figure 19-4: Keep tabs on how much of your traffic is new and how much is repeat visits.
Errors
Most stat software tracks errors, instances when your visitors get an actual error message when they try to do something on your site or when they try to view a page that doesn't exist anymore (or never did).
Track your error logs to find out where visitors are having problems — and be sure to fix the errors.
Getting Web Stats
You can find many statistics software applications that track web traffic available for installation on your blog. But before you get too carried away, check to see whether your blog host offers web traffic–tracking software or gives you access to your server logs.
If your web host offers stats software, review the offering carefully. You might not need any additional tools, or you might want to supplement the preinstalled tool with one of those discussed in the following sections, if only to check the accuracy of the numbers you're seeing. Keep in mind that different applications can measure statistics differently, so the numbers may not be exactly the same.
Some bloggers like to look at the server logs for their sites. Server logs are simple text files that web servers generate to keep track of information about who visits a web server, when they visit, what kind of browser they use, when errors occur, and so on.
Most web hosts provide access to stat software and server logs through an administrative control panel.
In the following sections, I cover the different services and software available. You should be able to find a service that fits your web-stats needs.
Choosing hosted statistics software
Like hosted blog software, the company that creates the hosted web statistics software package also manages that software. Typically, you install the software by adding a chunk of HTML code to your pages, which communicates with the hosted software.
Because you must be able to place some HTML code into your blog software templates so that it appears on every page that you want to track, blog software that doesn't give you the ability to add code will rule out using a hosted statistics solution.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics has a great interface with many options that you can customize and use to analyze stats to your heart's content. Google Analytics can calculate how many page views and number of visits your blog or site has received. The Google Analytics system (shown in Figure 19-5) is free, but it requires a registered Google Account (which is free, as well).
Figure 19-5: Use Google Analytics to check out where your website's traffic comes from.
StatCounter
StatCounter is a free, hosted statistics tracker, and new users can figure it out easily, thanks to good organization and explanation in the control panel.
After setting up your site in StatCounter, you must insert StatCounter HTML code into your blog templates so that it can track every page. StatCounter measures page views and hits, of course, but much more, too.
Site Meter
Site Meter has been around since the beginning of stat tracking on the web. This tool provides you with basic details about each visitor who comes to your blog and shows you what the visitor does while he or she is there, even down to what page he or she is on before leaving.
Site Meter (see Figure 19-6) has two levels of service: the free Basic edition and the Premium edition. The Premium edition provides more information than the Basic setup and grants access to a longer history of your statistics, but the free edition is a good starting point for new bloggers. The professional edition starts at $6.95 a month.
Figure 19-6: Site Meter offers two levels of statistics tracking.
Choosing installable statistics software
Web analytics software that you can install on your web server and manage on your own is called installable software. If you want to use a specific analytics package that your web host doesn't normally provide, look into whether you can install software on your server. Some hosts can give you suggestions and may even assist you when you install analytics software.
Installed software usually measures the same metrics as hosted statistics software, but it does so by analyzing log files stored on your website rather than gathering information when a visitor hits your site. Some web developers feel that installed software therefore provides more accurate numbers than hosted software, but many other web developers and bloggers hotly debate that opinion.
When you sign up for a web-hosting package, the web host probably has some kind of web statistics available to you. These packages can range from open source software to custom, home-grown solutions.
Check the technical requirements for the package that you want to install to be sure that your server works with it.
The Webalizer
The Webalizer is an open source application that you install on your server. Because it's free to use, many web hosts offer it as part of their standard web-hosting packages. Originally created in 1997, the Webalizer lets you track hits, page views, geographical origin of your traffic, and other data.
The Webalizer generates easy-to-read pages that show traffic to your site broken down by month, but you can also see traffic figures by day and even by hour. It offers all the usual suspects, from page views to unique visitors to the top referring sites.
AWStats
http://awstats.sourceforge.net
AWStats is a popular web statistics analyzer that you can install on your web server. Its features enable you to track not only visitors but also streaming media, e-mail, and FTP transactions on your server. AWStats requires that you have the Perl programming language installed on your web server to operate. (Most web servers support this requirement.)
AWStats generates graphs and other visual indicators about the activity of your visitors month by month, letting you see the region and cities where traffic originates, as well as the operating systems and browsers that your visitors use, among many other measurements.
Mint
Mint, which began in 2004 as a basic website tracking tool, has matured into a great service. Mint's installable software offers the usual suspects: new and returning visitors, the sites from which they get to your site, search terms that they use to find you, and so on. Mint also looks really cool: It produces fun graphs and charts.
A Mint license costs $30 per site.
Finding Out What Others Are Saying
With web analytics software, you can watch the behavior of your site's visitors, but you can also find out a lot by monitoring mentions of you, your blog, and your topic on the web (especially on your competitors’ blogs!) on other websites. Watching what's going on within the blogosphere is a huge task. You can spend hundreds of dollars to have others do it for you, or you can check out some of the simple tools available on the web.
Among the simple blogosphere tools available to you are the following:
- E-mail notifications: Receive updates via e-mail about content or topics that you want to keep up with.
- RSS watch lists: Keep current on topics by using your favorite newsreader software. (Read more about RSS in Chapter 16.)
You can use these tools in a variety of ways by doing random manual searches and installing software designed to display web information on your desktop.
The power of RSS and the syndication of news and blog feeds become apparent when you start trying to monitor certain phrases and keywords. RSS is one of the best ways to track what people are saying about your blog and about topics that you're interested in.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts (see Figure 19-7) provides you with e-mail notifications that it sends to you based on keyword searches of Google's search system. Sign up for an account and then create an alert by entering keywords to be notified about.
To receive any e-mail from the Google Alerts system, you need to enter some keywords. Follow these steps:
- Go to www.google.com/alerts.
- Enter the keywords that you want to be notified about in the Search Terms text box.
- Select the type of web content that you want included in your search from the Type drop-down list.
Your options are Everything, News, Blogs, Video, Discussion, and Books.
- Select how often you want to be notified from the How Often drop-down list.
You can select As-It-Happens, Once a Day, or Once a Week.
- Choose the quantity of results you want from the Volume drop-down list.
Your options are Only the Best Results and Everything.
- Type your e-mail address into the Your Email field or select Feed.
If you are already signed into your Google account, your Gmail address is automatically filled in.
If you select Feed, you can subscribe to these custom search results using an RSS reader. See Chapter 16 for more on RSS.
- Click Create Alert.
Google begins to track your search and sends you the e-mails that you requested at the rate you want them.
When a keyword gets a hit, you get an e-mail that includes a link to the web page. Google Alerts can do automatic keyword searches for all kinds of websites, including blogs.
Figure 19-7: Google Alerts sends you e-mail if it hits your keywords in searches.
These alerts work best when you create a specific and detailed search. Think about how you can refine your search to keep your results to a manageable number. For instance, if you want to track a particular news topic, use several keywords rather than just one. For example, use knitting sock yarn hand-dyed, not just socks.
Set Google Alerts to search for your name, your blog name, and any keywords that you want to be aware of. Use these alerts to find out when people are talking about you, your blog, or the topics you're covering.
Twitter is a social-networking service that allows you to post online messages known as tweets. People can then watch your tweets, and you can watch theirs. Your tweets can be anything, from short messages to links to websites or conversations with others. You can also use Twitter to track what people are talking about by searching for keywords and hashtags (Twitter users sometimes mark keywords in their tweets with a # to set them off and make it easier to search for them). You can search using the Twitter search engine at the top of the screen on www.Twitter.com. You can read more about Twitter in Chapter 17.
Technorati
Technorati is a search engine that focuses its energy on blogs — and does it very well. Technorati publishes information periodically that gives people who use its service a status of the blogosphere. Technorati can update you on the following:
- The number of blogs that are tracked
- Ongoing trends in conversations throughout a given time period
- The growth rate of blog technology adoptions
- Up-to-the-minute search results from blog posts
IceRocket
Track mentions of specific keywords on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more using IceRocket. This easy-to-use service delivers results on currently trending topics, as well, making it a good resource if you're trying to decide what to blog about on a slow day. IceRocket offers:
- A web statistics tool called IceRocket Blog Tracker
- Topic results based on IceRocket search terms
- Trends over time — the percentage of blog posts in the last month, two months, or three months mentioning any term