Chapter 19
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.
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.
Using web statistics, you can track
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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 is free, but it requires a registered Google Account (which is free, as well).
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. Need more features? StatCounter offers paid accounts starting at $9 per month.
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.
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.
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 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, email, 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.