More Statistics! 17/05/2005 Not since February (Traffic Statistics) have I given any real information on MadTV traffic statistics, apart from a brief cry of despair in The Great March Slump. Seeing as I really don't feel like writing today and yet the pressure to post is on me, it seems a good opportunity to have a "nothing post" looking at the stats as they are now.I have discovered that Matrixstats gives a rather nice graph of the hits and sessions for the preceding year and this saves me a lot of work in messing about with spreadsheets. Let's have a look at the hits graph to begin with as it's much the most impressive:This shows a fairly steady increase, especially if we remember that the Gone Away blog began on October 3rd, 2004. We can see the Great March Slump quite clearly and the recovery thereafter. What I notice and begin to worry about, however, is the plateau we have reached lately. In March I began to use the blog exchanges and have kept them going ever since. They have added to traffic and created a few more regulars but I am greedy and always want more. So I ponder and scheme in an attempt to find the next step forward.We should remember that the the graph reflects hits only. As such it includes page hits and non page hits, the difference being that a non page hit is one where an image or supporting file is required to complete a page viewing. The number of sessions is a much closer approximation to how many visitors are coming to the site, therefore (a session is a visit as seen by the site and may include several page hits). Here is the sessions graph for the same period:Notice how much smoother the graph is than the hits one. The Great March Slump is very evident still, accentuated by the huge spike just before it (caused by Mad doing extensive work on the site at the time and by his leaving a comment on the Cameron Moll blog which brought hundreds of requests for an image file stored on his server). And again we can see that a plateau has been reached.Much of my time is spent in grappling with the problem of how to increase traffic beyond what we have already achieved. One of the things that I have been forced to learn about is Page Rank. Google ranks pages on the net according to a secret formula and it is this that decides where in a list of search results that page will appear. The higher the page rank, the nearer the top of the results the page will come. The ranking is out of ten. Mad is particularly proud that his index page recently went up to 6/10, which is an exceptionally high ranking for an individual site like MadTV. My blog hovers at 4/10, a good ranking for a blog but not good enough for me (I told you I'm greedy).So how do we improve page rank? That is the question that all the webmasters would like to know the answer to. I have seen long dissertations on how Google works them out but all I can tell you is that it is based on a mathematical formula and that the number of incoming links to the page is important. When you consider that the top sites have thousands of links coming in, you realize that we humble bloggers have our work cut out if we are ever to compete with that sort of thing.I have concluded that page rank is one of those things I can't do much about. Google likes me quite well for a mere blogger and I can't really complain at that. But it does leave me wondering what else I can do to reach all those people out there who are just dying to read my blog (although they may not know it yet). If anyone has the answer and doesn't mind sharing it, I'd love to hear it.
Clive
Ken Much of my time is spent grappling with the twin pressures of needing to service my blog but, at the same time, not allowing the pressure to post to destroy whatever minimal value my poems may contain. Hmmm! I came across a passage from Ecclesiastes which seems pertinent: Better a handful of quietness than both hands full with toil and much chasing the wind. Date Added: 17/05/2005
Gone Away How true, Ken! Date Added: 17/05/2005
Jodie No answers from me. :) But Gone, everyone should read you before breakfast, like the morning papers. I know I haven't been gone very long, but I missed you. Date Added: 17/05/2005
Gone Away Aww thanks, Jodie. It's getting them to know where I am that's the problem. ;) Date Added: 17/05/2005
Josh I am a bit surprised by your interest in this subject, Gone -- I thought the technical side of the web bored you somewhat. ;) I just installed a stats program myself, and have had a bizarre tendency to open it every time I visit my site, as if there will be a hit that I can transparently identify as coming from YHWH himself. Gotta stop doin' that. I'm not sure what it means, Gone, but my pagerank is also 4, and I get far less traffic, I am sure, than you do. I think perhaps the algorithm deals not only with positive or additive variables, i.e., perhaps some traffic or links (SEO spammers, link farm operations, assorted known blog spamming methodologies) serve to dissipate the "net cred" that is pagerank. Food for thought, eh? Date Added: 17/05/2005
Gone Away I agree that the value of page rank is questionable, Josh, since it only affects what position you occupy in any search on Google. They have done as much as they can to prevent the spammers cheating on it and, since the experts still seem a bit puzzled by how it's calculated, I think it probably fools the bad guys too. But what's my next step if I don't consider page rank? How can I take another step forward? I'm impatient, Josh, impatient! :D (I'd also like to know how Mad gets a 6/10 and I only merit 4/10 when I'm generating most of his traffic!) ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
josh Have you taken into account the possibility that the Fully-Qualified domain ( to wit, madtv.me.uk ) gets additional credit for traffic than its ancillary pages, as it is ultimately considered the root of the statistical tree? If this is indeed the case, perhaps a little reshuffling to a subdomain (http://goneaway.madtv.me.uk/default.asp?BlogID=112 doesn't sound too shabby, eh?) might help to further isolate your stats? This is, for instance, one of the main reasons blogger/blogspot went to subbies, as it serves as a much better separation than the REAL hierarchical structure, which is most likely something like http://blogspot.com/~fooburgsblog/ on the web server. Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Yeah, I've thought of that, Josh, but Mad says no, it takes the ranking for each page separately. And it looks as though he's right becau7se it's only his index page that ranks 6/10. The other pages rank 5/10 (which still bites my bum). It looks as though we'll be going separate anyway because Mad's considering upgrading so that he can have several domains and I'd be one of them. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Ned I understand the interest in checking the stats and considering the traffic patterns, where the traffic comes from, who returns and why. We put something of ourselves out there for public consumption and although a nice circle of warm and friendly visitors, our comfortable neighborhood of old friends and acquaintances help us to continue by their contributions and comments, we want to know if someone beyond that has been reached. I don't think we are looking for a few choice sycophants but rather some kind of validation that what we do is worth it. Life has to contain a few obsessions or we become boring robots who just walk through it observing it. Without obsessions there wouldn't be art or music, literature or poetry. We would never have discovered the secrets of the universe or walked on the moon. I am all in favor of obsessions, even obsessions about stats. Which reminds me of something I need to go do... Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away LOL Ned, you have the truth of it. It is something of an obsession but there is something that matters to us at stake - our blogs. :D Date Added: 18/05/2005
Josh Hrmm, gotta wonder if he has some strong backlinks, as his index page is static. :-? On second thought, nevermind, as I am not serious about this at all -- If I was I wouldn't be hosting my site from a dinosaur in my guest bedroom closet. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Josh, if I could work out why Google loves him so, I'd do the same as he does. Trouble is, not even he knows what he's doing right. But you do care, come on admit it. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Josh Under duress, perhaps, but as you might know, that is usually inadmissable in a court of law. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away All right, we'll let you get away with that one. :) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Josh If you really want to go to sleep in a hurry, or you have a hankering to read a document dryer than stale matzos, check out "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, the dissertation that made them both billionaires and made Mad's page so je ne sais cool. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Thanks, Josh. When my brain is awake tomorrow morning, I'll have a look at that. Date Added: 18/05/2005
keeefer Search engine optimisation helps greatly. A previous company i worked for came consistently top 10 on certain keywords across most search engines with a minimal spend. (How this was achieved....pay man in states to do it). You could of course always embark on a high level ad campaign and drive traffic with the use of smart creatives. Though this will also cost money. You could always cheat....thats always a good option. Two ways spring to mind. 1. Get hackers to disable the rest of the internet....very costly and time consuming, and i have the feeling the web expands faster than you could have it hacked. 2. Spread each post over 5 linked pages. This will create more page impressions giving greater traffic results. Users could also be tricked into creating more impressions by links such as 'click here for free gmail account' or 'Naked Brittney pics' bogus ad links Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Er, thanks, Keef. I didn't realize you knew so much about this... Date Added: 18/05/2005
Way Teeth whitener strips, zoom-zoomy cars, one of those new spiffer mops, a plug-in air freshener, and maybe a Chia pet designed to resemble that Paris Hilton's brain might help, though the good Lord knows I haven't given any of them a try yet, I am so lax. I dunno, man. I just don't know. Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away It's a brave new world, Way. ;) Date Added: 18/05/2005
John Evans I haven't had time to read all the other comments, so forgive me if I duplicate information already posted. Google's PageRank is based on INCOMING links, plus an assessment of the PageRank of those sites. SYNTAGMA is only ranked 3 on that measure, but it has only been going since March this year. They've rejiggled the algorithm recently for search page position, so my blog, SYNTAGMA has dropped from 4th on the page for "Syntagma" to 11th. Yahoo still has me on 4 with a much more interesting spread of data. I've fixed up an improvised Technorati tag system on the blog (Blogger not providing one) and my archives are being flooded with Technorati searches. So I expect my ranking to rise sharply soon. You might try it here too. Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Hmmm, interesting, John. I've looked at Technorati before but not joined - I suppose I ought to have another look. And if Google has been messing around with the algorithm, that would explain a few strange anomalies I've noticed just recently. Thanks. Date Added: 18/05/2005
prying1 On occasion I am surprised by someone using Google and coming up with my site on the first page. Sometimes # 1 (whoo hoo!!!) Don't know why. Glad it happens. Only suggestion I have is: Pray!!! Date Added: 18/05/2005
Gone Away Paul, I think you've come up with the best solution of all! Date Added: 18/05/2005
keeefer Gone, I used to work on the net so i know a little about how it works. The numerous links thing is because the search engines use a range of bots (called spiders if memory serves) that crawl over the web from link to link collating data for the search engines. The more of your links that they find the more important you are deemed to be. The spiders themselves are actually a real pain in the ass when you are trying to get an accurate page impression report for a large website. Most search engine optimisation is based on a selection of keywords. You register say 10 keywords that you want to be found under and then whenever they are entered into a search engine up you pop. I dont think you necessarily have to pay to do this either. Anyway this should help http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/ Date Added: 19/05/2005
Gone Away Actually, I've been meaning to learn more about keywords. Thanks, Keef. Date Added: 19/05/2005
Gary Clive, I'm not sure that random search engine hits increase readership much. A lot of hits we get from those are from people who are not really interested or don't even know about blogs. I think for the most part bloggers tend to read blogs. The general public does some, but mostly the really popular blogs, I would think. I could be wrong. I use BlogExplosion.com, to some success. You can "surf" for credits there, but you can buy them, too. But a foolproof way of getting hits is to post on popular subjects, like entertainment stars. The hits on my post about Carrie Underwood (the American Idol finalist) dwarf all my other posts. It's amazing. People still comment on that post, and I wrote it in March. Date Added: 19/05/2005
Gone Away I'm learning all the time about increasing readership, Gary. And I agree that many of the things we chase after (like page rank) may not help in that direction at all. But I'll try most things to see what works. I, too, use BlogExplosion (as well as BlogClicker, Blogazoo and BlogCrowd) and there is no doubt that such blog exchanges increase through traffic, although they are less effective in bringing true readers to the site. Certainly, posting on popular subjects does wonders for the traffic (I did one on Paris Hilton a while back) but, again, I'm not sure that this is for me. I'm an old fogey really and it would be wrong for me to pretend otherwise. ;) So I seek my market. I know it's there since I already have a dedicated readership (thanks people :D) - what concerns me presently is reaching the ones who haven't realized yet that what they need to make their lives complete is me! ;) Date Added: 19/05/2005
Gone Away Incidentally, I should mention that the good old blog directories are not to be despised. In a comment to a recent post, I mentioned that Blogarama appeared to have collapsed. It is back up now but they have lost their entire database. I watched for a few days to see whether I would reappear in their listings but it didn't happen. So I re-registered a couple of days ago. Since then I have had four visitors through my listing with Blogarama. And I presume that those visitors were looking for my kind of blog since they will have gone to the Literature section to find me. Now that ain't bad targeting. ;) Date Added: 19/05/2005
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