Tuesday, 03 Dec 2002
MediaBlog log analysis
We are admitted stats junkies. Log analysis can be very revealing, showing you information that can affirm or defy assumptions. Log analysis is also an effective tool help make design choices. We thought it might be interesting to share the statistics of our weblog so that others in Blogosphere might benefit from the information. Here's what we found by looking at the first two months of our stats.Page Requests: We were shocked to see our XML feed perform so well. This probably isn't a shock to those who already have RSS feeds, but this is the first site we've hosted with RSS. The feed outperforms the traffic to our entire blog, by almost 2-to-1. We also added Email-A-Friend functionality this month, but didn't think it would be used that much. Turns out it's relatively popular.
PAGE REQUESTS |
OCT |
NOV |
| /index.xml | 7,442 | 12,816 |
| /weblog.php | 4,327 | 4,837 |
| /comments.php | 1,932 | 2,506 |
| /print.php | 105 | 409 |
| /search/index.php | 116 | 334 |
| /tellafriend.php | na | 309 |
| /archivesum.php | 165 | 181 |
| /archives.php | 58 | 136 |
RSS feeds: Tracking our RSS feeds, we have noticed that when other bloggers reference our posts, they tend to pick up the exact wording of the post summary provided in the RSS feed. So it's worth spending a little extra time making sure that summaries are compelling and well written.
When we looked at our feed in NetNewsWire, we also noticed that the image we chose for RSS feed didn't look so hot. It was 600 pixels wide and the window was much smaller. So we designed a special logo for our feeds.
RSS
REFERRERS |
OCT |
NOV |
| Radio Userland | 3,088 | 4,856 |
| Ranchero NetNewsWire | 671 | 2,471 |
| Amphetadesk | 41 | 87 |
| Aggie | 20 | 122 |
| Straw | na | 74 |
Individual Referrals: When we first started getting mentions on other blogs, we thought JD Lasica's post and David Weinberger's post would bring the most referral traffic. Turns out, Adrian Holovaty and Matt Jones have been the most valuable hubs for referral traffic. However, it's truly hard to know how much traffic an individual site brings. For example, did J-Log find out about our site from JD Lasica? Therefore, that referral traffic was originally due to JD's mention.
TOP
3 IND. WEBLOG REFERRERS |
OCT |
| Holovaty.com (1 ref, blogroll) | 88 |
| Dashes.com (1 ref) | 61 |
| J-Log: Mallasch.com (XML feed) | 56 |
TOP
3 IND. WEBLOG REFERRERS |
NOV |
| Holovaty.com (2 refs, blogroll) | 193 |
| Blackbeltjones.com (1 ref) | 112 |
| Web-graphics.com (1 ref) | 99 |
Our hosting service, Media Temple, provides Urchin's analytics software to track our stats. Sometimes we crunch the logs manually using the free software Analog.
Posted on Dec 03, 2002 | 8:15 am EST
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