Stats are, in general, something I worry very little about. I am a small-time blogger who is happy that way. The other day, however, I was writing up a public bio for NetGalley and realized most publishers want to know some general statistics about a blog prior to approving review requests. This makes sense of course. So for the first time in probably six or seven months, I checked out my stats on various sites such as Google Analytics, Blogger's Stats, Feedburner, StatCounter, SiteMeter, etc.And all I heard was blah blah blah blah blah. Seriously, stats are just not my thing. Approximately 500 ABSOLUTE UNIQUE VISITORS (you know that needs to be in all caps) have visited my site today upon writing. Since only about 12 of them actually commented, I am not sure what exactly that means for publishers. As for the rest of it, blah blah blah blah.
On a side note, I did discover a really interesting fact: there are 1,340 pageviews for my post on The Odyssey: Books 7-12 and 1,018 for Books 1-6. I really get a chuckle out of the fact that two of my most popular posts are on an ancient text. While I would like to believe that indicates a renewed interest in ancient lit, I am inclined to think it's students
What about you guys..any particular STAT FACT that you find actually interesting?
Trish....too funny. I am not into stats either, but it is easy to check with blogger now. I was amazed that one of my most popular posts was on a book review about artist Frida Khalo....think was an eye opener too me.
ReplyDeleteI haven't put my stats on my Net Galley bio and it hasn't made a difference yet. The one that was declined was because the publisher was only currently accepting reviewers they had a previous relationship with.
ReplyDeleteI do like search results stats, my blog's still in its infancy but on Flickr I get some hilarious search terms come up.
Like PWB I haven't posted my stats on NetGalley either. It didn't really occur to me until this post, but seeing as I haven't really had a problem yet, I save it for another time.
ReplyDeleteAND like you I seem to have much more "traffic" than those who comment. I haven't been able to figure out what's up with that.
Still this post has made me curious. I might be checking my stats later this evening. It has been a while...
The stats can be very bizarre. I have most of my hits for "Who Invented Christmas Tree Lights?"
ReplyDeleteI can state that my visit counts only dipped about 5% with me taking a month off. Otherwise, blahblahblahblahblah
ReplyDeleteA Separate Peace is my biggist hit-getter.
I have to admit, my favorite thing to look at in stats is what countries the IP addresses are bouncing off of. I know most of them end up being spam, especially now that I'm on wordpress, but still, it's fun to see where the stats come from. I've also had some interesting things happen to me with stats. It was stats that told me the NY Times article about me was up, and other articles afterwards. And once, I'd written about a character in a book I was writing and found out she had the same name as a minor porn star because people were searching for her and landing on my page. I changed her name, obviously. :D But I don't pay much attention to site stats in general. I certainly don't pay any attention to it on other peoples' blogs. I mean, a blog that holds constant giveaways is going to get tons of hits, but those hits aren't going to convince me that they have a good or popular blog, you know?
ReplyDeleteps - not very surprising but my highest page count is on my response to the NY Times page. Only my home page has a higher count, and my response post has over 7000 more hits than the next highest post. Yeah...
ReplyDeleteI also get confused by stats and so I don't really look at them much. I think if I really knew how few people visited my blog, I might actually get depressed, so I try to hide that info from myself!
ReplyDeleteMy Banned Book Week posts probably get the most hits, with Sylvester and the Magic Pebble being at the top of the list. Apparently people are really confused about why that book was banned...as they should be.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing about stats is that, depending on where they come from, they can be completely different! My Blogger stats don't match my Google stats, which don't match my Sitemeter stats... (not that I check any of them with any regularity)
ReplyDeleteI love Amanda's story about the minor porn star! (Stats are definitely useful for that sort of thing!)
I keep a keen eye on my stats. From everywhere. But only because I love stats and numbers, and I love seeing how / from where / why people come to my blog. I want to get a handle on what they are thinking when they show up there and "BOOBALICIOUS" is one of my highest rated search terms.
ReplyDeleteThank you 14 year old boys for giving me daily gigglesnorts. I hope you find a good book to read on your quest for delicious boobs.
I have three different stat programs and one of them I paid for. I use feedburner, and I even have a personal URL Shortening Device that I can use to track click links.
Heck I found this post in one of those programs :P
Everytime I look at stats, I feel like the world's biggest loser and want to hang myself. I've whined about it once or twice and some of my commenters have told me that since they follow me through Google Reader, some of the numbers are skewed. Whatever. You know the highest number of hits I've received have been on my review of graphic novel Pyongyang. ???? Whatever. Like you said, the most important thing about blogs is that news is viral, so if you have one follower, but that one is influential, that is all it takes.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Sandy on stats -when I look at my blog's stats I become so depressed, so I try not to. I use NetGalley but never post my stats. Instead I just post my review policy. It works for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on the stats. At first it was important to me but then I remembered that I really started the blog for me. Therefore stats really didn't matter so I took the sitemeter thing off and rarely look at google stats.
ReplyDeleteI haven't looked at my stats in eons. I just don't care anymore. I wonder if there's a stat for how often we look at our stats?
ReplyDeleteI randomly look like stats and, like Sandy and Vasilly above, they tend not to impress me that much. The only one I really understand is the "Followers" one, but then when I see the number, which is pretty modest, but not SUPER modest, I just keep thinking about all the people following my blog and never commenting, and wondering what I used to do differently when I used to get 20+ comments per post where now I'm more around 5 and it's just a downward, negative spiral that I like to avoid ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure my stats are fairly embarrassing, so I just ignore all but the most public (# of followers). I love the idea of all the cheating high school students visiting your blog. My high school sophomores are amazingly sophisticated about searching for information (answers) on the internet. Wouldn't it be funny if they ended up at my blog!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this one. I have no idea what stats mean for my blog. As long as people respond to my posts, I am one happy blogger.
ReplyDeleteMy most viewed post is my Valentine's Day post where I listed down my five favorite fictional couples. Weird...
I'm not sure what it all means either. I'm fully convinced that most of my visitors are spam bots!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to stats, I'm pretty much just happy to see I get (a few) more hits now than when I started out. My top post, oddly enough, is on Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, followed closely by classics like The Odyssey, War and Peace, and The Burial at Thebes. Interesting.
ReplyDelete500 visitors. I remember when I used to get 50. ;) I don't really pay a lot of attention to stats either--mostly because I don't think they can truly be trusted. I do like to see which posts people are reading and which posts are the most popular. I get a LOT for The Odyssey and Brothers Karamazov. But since I've imported two blogs into one and then changed the url many of my older posts aren't very searchable on Google--hence the low visitor numbers.
ReplyDeletemy most viewed post is my post about goodnight moon. Followed by Homer. Yes, Homer is a distant second to a picture book.
ReplyDeleteI love following stats -- just to see which posts are most viewed. I don't worry about them, but is interesting to see that no matter what I post on the weekend it always dips down. It reminds me not to post on the weekends...none of those school students looking for answers lol.