I don’t obsess over metrics. But I enjoy comparing numbers now and then in relation to certain events.
Responding to Loic Le Meur and his traffic sources for last month, I’d like to share with you this blog’s sources for the period of November 27, 2008 to January 4, 2009:
- google.com (organic) – 10,486 visits
- direct (browser bookmarks, etc) – 3,092 visits
- twitter.com – 1,822 visits
- yahoo.com (organic) – 1,740 visits
- stumbleupon.com (referral) – 1,263 visits
- facebook.com (referral) -1, 146 visits
- msn search – 387 visits
- live search – 349 visits
- answers.yahoo.com – 323 visits
- google.com (referral) – 314 visits
Seen in a vacuum, these numbers may not mean anything. But they do, especially when you consider I rarely receive significant visits from Facebook, let alone answers.yahoo.com.
If you scroll back to my five-week-old article of tips on how I use Google Analytics to track aggregate data of website visitors, referral sources, browsers and operating systems used, etc., you will note I included data from a three-month period:
- 11,430 visitors
- 20,391 page views
- 1.44 average time per page view
- 1:09 average time on site
- 75.4% bounce rate
- 80.4% new visits
Now look at the last four weeks:
- 21,685 visitors
- 32,844 page views
- 1.36 average time per page view
- 0:57 average time on site
- 81.7% bounce rate
- 88.8% new visits
Here’s a graph of that December traffic (using Quantcast, another tool I recently started using):
Do you want to guess what caused the mountain?
On December 21, I wrote an article about a series of Facebook phishing scams, that at the time, had zero online references. My post now has 69 comments, with new ones appearing every other day.
While you spend an average 60 seconds reading my blog content (typically because you read one post and rarely click into multiple posts), every visitor to the Facebook scam page spent three minutes reading!
Like the cycle of news, blog content comes and goes. But if you write something at the right time, visitors will come. You don’t have to be an A-list blogger; you can be anyone. Just write it and capture the noise. Provide possible solutions. Offer a way for people to ask questions, whether by blog comment, email, or Facebook message (and I received all three).
If you do it right, something will go viral as that Facebook post did.
Enough people told each other, that they came and posted their thanks. Those comments don’t belong to bloggers, either. There are few blog links attached to their names. Most of their comments are attached to random email addresses on yahoo and hotmail. The bulk of those commenters were Facebook users–but if I have anything to say about it, they will become future bloggers.
Photo credit: _federico_
Related posts:
- Analyzing 365 Days of Blog Visitors Yields Facebook Censorship On Top
- How a Blog Post Could Go Viral
- My 20 Most Popular Blog Posts on Social Media
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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This post goes to show that the real audience is not the already initiated, but the vast numbers of newbies. Good job helping them understand Webspace. (Also goes to show that Live.com is weak, weak, weak, although they do have a corner on Pictometry flyover city imaging, for now).
I had a similiar experience, when I was ghost writing for a real estate appraisers blog. It happened to be right in the beginning of the housing crises, and Indymac went under a month after I started the blog. The day I wrote a post about the Indymad debacle, I got five times as many hits as any other day, and they kept coming back week after week. That being said, It is hard to be ahead of the pack on a hot story, especially with the amount of people that sit in front of their computer all day checking out every story that pops up. However, as you and I can both attest to, it can be done.
Jennifer Larson´s last blog post..Link Your Way to More Blog Traffic
Admiring your transparency here – and using it to help us all learn…also, massive kudos for being ahead of the curve and the incredible energy you put into this beautiful blog.
Julie Roads´s last blog post..Channel the Saran Wrap
Ari–This is very inspiring. I’m still in search of the “sticky” post for me regarding relationships. I suspect it will have something to do with sex, which can be very similar to a phishing scam, don’t you think? Anyway, I was feeling sort of blah this morning. Your post + my triple espresso now have me optimistic and ready to face down the WWW. Thanks for the inspiration!
Alisa Bowman´s last blog post..Save your marriage—and your happiness
Just shows you what kind of benefits there can be from helping everyone else, especially against a scam. Just like a journalist being the first one to report a story.
Can’ t think of a better way to jump into the blogging scene than with your comment above Ari. Capture the noise….kudos
Marc Meyer´s last blog post..Social Media could be the savior for SMB’s
“If you write something at the right time, visitors will come.” Truer words were never spoken, certainly as it applies to blogs. Spot-on, Ari. That has absolutely been the case with my blog. The intersection of Content and Timing, much more of a sure thing than Sunset and Vine, cannot be overstated.
CGabriel´s last blog post..Blackhawks Win and Lose in Winter Classic
Google Analytics is great. It’s amazing how one post at the right time can bring in so many visitors. It’s interesting to see how many of those bookmark your page and/or sign up for the RSS feed.
Gennaro´s last blog post..3 Perfect Places To Befriend A Buddhist Monk
There’s hope. That’s what I’m taking with me from this. lol
Wayne John´s last blog post..How To Create An Entrecard Top Droppers Widget For Blogger
Liking your no-nonsense views as I read through today!
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Twitter Comment
RT @ariherzog: @Madison14 See [link to post] for how I used analytics to determine how one post quintupled my readership. #journchat
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Not to diminish the value of your great observations (not to mention all the great data to support it), but isn’t the ‘discovery’ fairly common sense to media in general (ala. the uptake on readership for a piece in the Wall Street Journal, for instance)?
Paula Thornton´s last blog post..The New Value in the Web – the Archive – A New Approach to Search is Needed
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Thanks for this, very helpful. As always, its the quality of the work/content that draws people in, the rest is mostly fluff if the content is not what catches the attention of the reader.
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