Website stats - an addictive pastime?
Maybe bloggers are a naturally vain group, with a healthy narcissistic streak running through their core. But of all the ones I’ve met there is a consistent and strong interest in website analytics; and I’m no exception. When we publish a post we like to know how popular it’s been, and we like to see how our traffic ranks with other sites we know.
Most people use Google Analytics to track their website traffic, but this is not the only measure available to the statistically inclined blogger. Here are 8 tools that might keep you distracted for hours, pondering over the progress of your plans for world domination. If I’ve missed any other sites please feel free to suggest them.
1. Alexa - probably the most recognised ranking globally, Alexa allows you to find your position in the global league table of websites. It also lets you know your ranking in a list of individual countries and provides demographic data of your website’s readers. By their own admission, the rankings become less reliable for those outside the global top 100,000. Their algorithm is a closely guarded secret.
2. Compete - similar to Alexa, but updated monthly rather than daily, meaning that a website can move through several hundred thousand ranking points in one day. Their results are harder to believe than those of Alexa from my own experience, as relatively small changes in traffic have resulted in dramatic shifts in ranking.
3. Invesp Travel Blogrank – a site that takes Alexa and Compete rankings, along with backlinks, RSS subscribers, page visitors and other metrics, and puts them into their secret magic formula. The rankings are compromised by the limitations of the input metrics (my RSS numbers regularly fluctuate between 50 and 160 in a day, while Compete appears equally volatile) but it’s still a handy site to see the relative profile of your site alongside others that you know. Updates are random; sometimes weekly, sometimes more frequent.
4. Travel Blog Sites – a very simple formula. Takes the average combined score from Alexa and Compete and provides a weekly top 100 of travel blogs. Nothing fancy, but an easy and visually appealing way to see how you measure up against others. It is updated weekly. Two major limitations with this one: if you’re stuck with a poor Compete ranking for one month you’ll be penalised for the next month on here, and more importantly it only ranks those sites that have registered with them, so it’s not a comprehensive list.
5. Technorati – a purist’s favourite, these guys use yet another closely guarded formula. Supposed to measure influence rather than traffic. I haven’t yet got to grips with Technorati but from what I hear a high ranking with this site is one of the most credible endorsements of a blog.
6. Sitelogr – a nifty way of tracking not just the traffic stats for your site, but also a measure of the daily ad revenue that you could be earning and the site’s overall monetary value. Useful? Unlikely. Interesting? Of course. Updates daily.
7. Website Outlook – similar to Sitelogr, but updates every 2 weeks rather than daily. The other useful measure that this site provides is the number of backlinks to your site; a valuable statistic when promoting a site to potential buyers or advertisers.
8. Blog Top Sites - my favourite of all the analytic sites out there. The site provides a tiny widget for your site that updates your website ranking on a hourly basis. If you click through it will also give you a graph of unique visitors and page views for that day, again updated hourly. Excellent for checking if your latest post has attracted any interest or not.
9. Top 50 in Travel – a brand new site set up by Brendan van Son, this ambitious effort combines hard data (Alexa rankings) with Brendan’s own assessment of a blog’s layout, content, writing quality and photo quality. Only started in July 2010: one to watch.
All these sites offer something of value, and of course each has its limitations. They can be useful in tracking how our blogs are performing, but can easily serve as a distraction from the main purpose of managing a blog. And don’t you find that you”ll always prefer the one that offers you the most favourable rank?
i’ve just started getting vain.. so thanks for the helpful links.
Really interesting post. I hadn’t actually heard of the last three websites.
Fantastic resource! I shoul look at some it the others you mentioned. Thanks for the post.
David
Hi Andy! thanks for this nice list
I’d like to add: http://www.websitegrader.com excellent resource!! Try it !! http://www.sitereport.org (similar to sitelogr) and last but not least: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org where you can get the number of linking root domains too !!
Michela
Thanks to all for the comments, and especially Michela for the extra sites to add to the list. Just tried websitegrader – very impressive results sheet.
ROFL!! .. zomg.. 8 tools that might keep you distracted for hours, pondering over the progress of your plans for world domination?!!! u kill me Andy! Very funny but very true. Yes we are vain! Yes we constantly plot world domination! But at least that keeps us out of ‘real’ trouble ..
gr8 post!
So now I need to look up YOUR rankings Mei
I’m sure your blog is doing great. Everytime I read it I get hungry – not a good idea at 9am!
Great list. I have a very young site and love looking at the various stats. You provided me a whole new list of places to check my progress. Thanks
Very useful list and important information for all those who are involved in travel. Thank you for sharing this!
After four years of experience of selling/managing ads for a prominent travel website, I believe that Alexa is way overhyped. Not a single advertiser has ever asked us about our Alexa ranking, and several SEO experts have told us that it is an open secret that Alexa is a joke. Its algorithm relies heavily on the toolbar (which we know our core audience would be highly unlikely to download) directories like DMOZ, which have serious flaws in how they are updated. [For example, my employer's site is not in DMOZ because there has been no editor of the category for over four YEARS.] Bloggers seem to care about Alexa, but advertisers do not because they know it’s bogus — real people (outside the techie sphere) will not download the toolbar, so the base audience is very skewed. That’s why you see so many tech sites ranking so highly.
We’ve had very fishy experiences with Compete.com that have shown the data to be unreliable. We’ve had spikes in traffic that were not reflected on Compete.com, and also the reverse — dips in traffic where Compete.com said our traffic grew. Quantcast.com is much more accurate because it’s tracked directly on your site.
Once your site reaches a threshold of traffic, most advertisers will pay a CPM and use a tracking pixel to count impressions/PVs. It pays to be honest about your traffic numbers. We use Google Analytics and one other tracking tool.
Thanks Kate for such a thorough response. As you say, each of these needs to be taken in context, and usually with a healthy dose of scepticism. That said, they do provide a barometer of sorts for how a site is doing. Good for self-monitoring, but as you rightly point out, maybe not with the credibility required to influence an advertising quote.
Thanks! Some new ones to check out.
The problem with Alexa is it too can be WAAAAAY off. For several months I was languishing w/ a ranking around 1,500,000. This made absolutely no sense as I had more traffic and appreciably higher rankings on Compete than others that rankings lower than 300,000. After doing a bit of research I found that there are many others who also had sites that just didn’t show up on Alexa’s radar for whatever reason. About 7 weeks ago I took some steps that were recommended on some sites, steps which Alexa claims on their blog will not have any effect on rankings. Clearly they are just trying to protect their reputation as it certainly did have an effect…you be the judge.
(Taken from my current alexa stats http://www.trans-americas.com)
8 weeks ago I had a ranking of over 1,500,000
About 7 weeks ago installed code so that Alexa whould properly rank me.
My current rank (3 month average) 492,336 an increase of 1,022,628.
My 1 month rank 336,531 an increase of 317,982.
Within days of initiating these steps my ranking dropped from 1.5 million, to 1.2 million, then under 1 million in just over 1 week and has steadily dropped since then.
Clearly Alexa has some major flaws. Mine is not a new site or domain so I should have been properly ranking, but I wasn’t. This was something I should have done 2 years ago, but wasn’t aware of the problem until a few months ago. Sadly, imperfect Alexa IS that important so it is important to make sure your site is ranking properly.
Great post Andy
Very helpful! I’ll also note that compete only tracks US traffic which for me does not make it a reliable tool. There are 194 other countries that could be visiting your blog and Compete won’t even register them. Too bad if you’re a really popular blog outside of the US, you get shunned.
btw forgot to add. I love Brendan’s new ranking system, because it is based in part to human evaluation. There is more to a site than traffic numbers, which we’ve just discovered can be unreliable. It’s great that Brendan is discovering those sites that have good content and design but have not yet got the “rankings.” I’m discovering a lot of great websites and some of my favorites are appearing on this list who have really inspiring content. It would take him a lot of time to evaluate all those sites.
Yep. Alexa is fickle. It has moods. Not quite as bad as Technorati when it went through its great seismic hissy-fit a few years back, but it’s still emotionally dangerous to put too much faith in Alexa…
(And let’s not be squeamish about using terms like “emotionally”. These are our babies, after all).
Having weaned myself off Alexa Sparky by shifting away from Firefox to Opera, I’m getting accustomed to a world without shouting “why have I just dropped / jumped ten thousand places for no apparent reason, you ludicrous piece of £&^$?” which, I feel, wasn’t healthy behaviour in the long run.
Of course now, thanks to this post and your kind efforts in putting it together, I’ve got 8 other sites to obsess over. *head in hands*
I am obessed with my blog stats. If one month shows lower than the rest then I start to freak. Problem is however there will come a day when my stats drop. AGH!!
Until recently we were obsessed with our alexa ranking instead of focusing on the bigger picture – revenue! The comments above have made a lot of sense and thankfully we are now able to go about our day without constantly checking.
Great article and no doubt one that trended well in your stats! Thanks for sharing.