Like most bloggers, I’m quasi-obsessed (okay, obsessed) with blog statistics. If my blog gets 1,000 more pageviews than yesterday, I want to know why, who and what. That said, there are literally dozens of ways to measure blog statistics so getting a real handle on your traffic can be a huge challenge. For example, when I was using Blogware, I was rock star, and now that I’m on Wordpress and part of the b5media network, AWStats also makes me look like one of the “in” kids. But then, I’ll wander over to Google Analytics where the the number of unique visitors and pageviews are so low, I get depressed. Meanwhile, Quantcast sits firmly in the middle of the road between AWStats and Google Analytics.
Now, Read/WriteWeb has a post on Compete, which is offering a whole new way to approach Web stats with something called “Attention Metrics”, which is based on two key issues:
- Attention: The total time spent on a site as a percentage of the total time spent online by all U.S. internet users
- Velocity: The relative change in daily Attention; velocity is used to determine the relative growth of a Web site compared to other sites.
If you’re a blogger, an advertiser or an investor, what metric(s) do you rely on? If you’re a company trying to attracting advertising or financing, using AWStats is a no-brainer because it appears to be the most generous when it comes to unique visitors and pageviews. If you’re an advertiser, however, using CPM, you may want to use something different such as ad server logs. Then, you’ve got Compete, which wants to sell you on a whole new way of looking at things.
So is time for the Internet Advertising Bureau to lead a campaign to standardize statistics to everyone can get on the same page? Update: TechCrunch weighs in Compete, and some of the issues happening in the Web tracking market.
Technorati Tags: AWStats, Google Analytics, Quantcast
5 Comments
I only have experience with Google Analytics, but I might be able to help you with the issue of low page visits and unique visitors.
Wordpress blogs don’t track properly on GA unless you have a plugin installed to work with it. Otherwise GA won’t track most of the activity you get.
Head on over to wordpress.org and check our their new plugins section. There is a nice selection that will mesh with GA and bring those stats right back to where you’d expect them.
Mark, Check out AttentionMeter.com when you get a chance.
Thanks for the tip.
Methinks a traffic stats support group would be a welcome distraction….
I feel your pain. I’m chained to traffic logs
There are worse addictions, I suppose. Like heroin.
The Attention and Velocity metrics do seem to be a new way to look at things, which might not be the worst thing in the world. It seems like the old metrics are getting a bit stale and obsolete. These new ones from Compete might not be the perfect answer, but they definitely help give a better impression of a site’s true traffic.
One Trackback
[...] dice the numbers, that it’s difficult to know whether any of them are on the mark. (See my Apples vs. Oranges vs. Plums vs. Pears post). comScore, which makes its living from providing online statistics, wades into the debate [...]