Friday, January 02, 2009

Tracking - How do you keep track or don't you?

If you have a blog, it's a good idea to know how many people are reading it. You can do this by installing a tracker which will tell you how many hits you're getting. Some popular trackers are stat counter and site meter, as well as the one I use, which is Google Analytics.

This tracker can be visible or invisible, depending on which you prefer. If you're a beginner or someone who doesn't expect high traffic on your blog, you may want to keep the stats to yourself. Vice versa, if you're proud of the amount of readers you pull in, you may wish to advertise.

Since I'm still building the following on my personal blog here, I don't share my results. Although other people can't see them, I can access these results by going to Google Analytics and checking my report. I also own group blogs at http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/ and http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com/, which I track at Analytics.

For tracking to be effective, it's best to check the results each day. I use a small spiral notebook to mark them down. I include the date, the amount of visits and how many visitors. Visits and visitors can be different, since sometimes people visit the blog more than once. I also filter out my own IP number, so that my visits back and forth to my blog are not counted in the mix. To find your IP number, you can go to http://www.myipaddress.com/.

For the dates I have higher results than the others, I write down the blog's subject line in my notebook. That way I can keep track of which topics produce the most results, so I can blog about similar topics later and hopefully get good responses.

If you don't track your blog hits and you're serious about blogging, I advise you to get started.

If you do track, which tracker do you use? How do you keep score? Please share.

15 comments:

  1. I have tracked visits to my web site, but not my blogs. I may start doing that now. Your advice is good. Thanks.

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  2. I track my website visits-which works for me since that is where my daily blog is found.

    But now you have me thinking I should track my Sunday blog as well... hmmm.

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  3. Anonymous10:39 AM

    I use Google Analytics. I found that while certain days I get more hits than others that sometimes it's better to know the topic. Mostly I'm interested in how people get to my site. One person tweeted about a post of mine on Twitter and sent me 30 hits that day alone. :)

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  4. Anonymous4:14 PM

    "For the dates I have higher results than the others, I write down the blog's subject line in my notebook."

    Good idea! I use Sitemeter for my Free Spirit blog. Actually for all three of my blogs. I find the reports a lot more easy to understand than statcounter.

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  5. I don't track - I'm not that tech savvy yet. Maybe I should take notes...

    Margay
    http://margayleahjustice.com

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  6. Good grief! I had never thought of being this organized about it. I just put a widget on the blog to see who the last few people were that visited and where they came from. I am going to check out Google Analytics right now!

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  7. I'm thinking of putting up one of those widgets you mentioned, Kim. I do have one on the group blog, but not here. That one is from mybloglog.com and is for yahoo users. I'm still figuring out which one to get for here.

    Morgan Mandel
    http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
    http://www.morganmandel.com

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  8. I track my stats with statcounter, though not religiously. It's interesting though to check it and see which types of posts bring in the most readers, etc.

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  9. I have StatCounter and use that. But I don't check it every day. Mostly, I check it when I have authors guest on my blog. If they want to know the stats (some do, some don't), it's easy to gather them from StatCounter. If you host authors on virtual blog tours, it's good to have a way of gathering stats.

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  10. Thanks, Morgan. I don't have a tracker on my blog, but will do it now that you mention it.

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  11. I track both my blog and my website using sitemeter and I get a weekly report sent to me via email.

    Cheryl

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  12. I'm wondering if there is anywhere online that compares what is reported with each of the counters--that way you could choose which one offers what you need. Hmm....I'm off to look!

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  13. I use site meter and Google Analytics for my main website, site meter with most of my blogs...at least the ones I want to keep track of how many and where they came from. Good research for what people are using to find you. I would love it if someone could explain Google Analytics to me...I see a graph and maybe I'm used to site meter but I can't read the darn thing.

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  14. Hi Morgan,

    I just signed up for sitemeter yesterday, so that my blog would be ready for today's challenge. I do have google analytics, but I usually opt for anything that is easier to use, and sitemeter is doing the job this time. Thanks for posting the tutorials. I love your sense of humor and outlook on life.

    Lael

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  15. Anonymous8:33 PM

    I'm serious about blogging, but I don't track statistics on the blogs where it doesn't affect me financially. Maybe if I had fewer blogs I would, but, at this point, I don't really care about the numbers when it comes to my personal blogs.

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