Blogspot has a new tab/function on my page (well, I assume everyone else's too): Stats. I don't know if you can see it, or if it's only available to me. Being inveterately curious, I - of course - looked. It has a graph of page views vs. time. I can't tell if that includes me or not. (update:yes, it does) One tab in Stats provides a list of post titles and number of views for that particular page. The maximum by a looooong way was Scary Hairdos in the Reichstag on Election Day.
It also has a "traffic source", which makes no sense to me. It also leaves me wondering which country/corporation uses .tr This tab lists "Referring URL" and "Referring Sites". Neither one makes sense to me. Given this ... what's the point? I've been interested recently in how statistics is used to further misguide the ignorant/uneducated (which ever you think is less offensive a term, though I really do mean both). If so, these statistics are simply incomprehensible and therefore harmless. I think.
That said, the other function, Audience, is actually interesting, since it's graphic: a world map with countries (and US states) in different colors based upon viewing traffic, a text list of those countries, and pie charts indicating which browser program is used for looking at the page. I realize a large number of the US views might be myself, if the system doesn't consider whether or not I'm the viewer. But the rest of the world? Germany: a couple of friends & in-laws there. France: one in-law there. UK - French resident moved there. But ... Canada, Russia, Netherlands, India, Luxembourg, and Malaysia??
Inveterate curiosity sated: Went to list of how many views per post from today. My viewing is included in the numbers. Therefore the number of views from the US is not really *that* impressive, since a significant - if small - % is mine. I'm not in Turkey or Malaysia, though...
Europa Clipper
2 days ago
1 comment:
Wordpress has these kinds of numbers for blogs there, too. Referrers are websites where your blog was mentioned and the person clicked the link (assuming there was a link provided). If you're listed at Minnesota.com, they would be a possible referrer. I have you listed on my blog, so I'm also a referrer.
Wordpress does not include me in the site visitors which makes their statistics interesting. I'd love to have a map of where people reading my blog are from. I know that Australia, Canada, Germany and Russia are in the mix because people have left messages. But it'd be cool to have a map graphic.
I have the traffic graphs too and find it very useful to see which posts generate the most interest. They also provide the most popular search terms which help me to optimize for search engines and draw traffic to my blog. For example, "Lisbeth Salander" is a powerful draw right now. A consistently popular post of mine was about the movie "Seven Pounds." Writing topics are popular, more so than the music topics, except when I write about Mischa Santora. Go figure.
Post a Comment