IN THIS CHAPTER

Figuring out what web statistics tell you

Checking out good statistics-tracking tools

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 my Resourceful Mommy blog (www.resourcefulmommy.com) in Figure 19-1.

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.
• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.