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orion_joel
10-05-2008, 01:03 AM
Just five days into the month i have noticed some rather good results from two of my websites. I normally check stats a few times a month, and keep a log of them at the end of month so i can see any trends.

This month to date (just 5 days in) two of my sites have had almost twice as many visitor's, and if they keep going at the rate they are potentially will triple or more the visitor count over last month.

While i know i am not complaining about this, it is just a little bizarre, they have been creeping each month by about 10-15 visitors more, and now on the few days gone they are going to be mostly large jumps.

Has anyone else noticed such trend or is maybe some of the stuff i have been trying to get visitors finally working for me.

Steve B
10-05-2008, 05:18 AM
I don't know much about website traffic - but, having taken a few statistics courses, it does seem like there must have been some fundamental change. When you're dealing with large numbers like that, and an observed history of a certain growth rate, it's hard to imagine such a large change with two different sites in the same month.

orion_joel
10-05-2008, 07:49 AM
I don't know of to much changing i have been updating the same as i have for past couple of months every 2 or 3 days and other then that nothing really that special. Both of them are Wordpress blogs so at this point i cannot really account for it, i will just have to see how it plays out over the month, and the coming months, as it is a change i would like.

KristineS
10-05-2008, 09:42 AM
Someone may have linked to you and given you a boost that way. Have you checked into that? Blogs can often see big jumps in traffic if they run a post on a topic that connects with people who pass it on, or if a well known blog links to them. So that might be it.

orion_joel
10-05-2008, 09:47 AM
I think that the only external link coming in on the stats is from here.

I was about to check Google Analytics to see if it could shed any more light on things, and realized when i last did the update to the latest version of wordpress guess what i forgot, to add the code back in.

vangogh
10-06-2008, 03:53 AM
The first thing to do is figure out where that extra traffic is coming from. What stats package are you using to know that traffic has increased?

Since you mentioned the sites being WordPress blogs it could simply be a matter of robots finding your site and crawling it. Depending on which robot(s) it could result in a lot activity showing in your site.

If it is real human visitors it could be that your sites have finally gained a measure of trust with search engines and you're suddenly ranking for some terms you weren't before.

It really could be so many different things that without knowing more about where the traffic is coming from it's hard to speculate why it's happening.

orion_joel
10-06-2008, 08:28 PM
These stats are coming from Awstats, it is the same thing i have tracked the stats for the last three months. So even though i realize it is maybe not the most accurate the stats should be relatively balanced to being from the same source.

The user access records is mainly showing IP address, however mostly different, only 2 or 3 appear within a similar range, which could be me on mobile broadband as i have a dynamic IP that changes but usually is within the same subnet.

Seven bots have been identifed, Yahoo, google, Alexa and 4 other unknown bots.

Average time on site is 0-30 secs for 88% of users.

Only 3 incoming from search engines, and the rest is direct access to the domain.

This is a summary on one of the domains. I did do three posts on consecutive day's which i had not done for a while. I don't know what the cause is but i don't mind i am happy it is getting viewed more even if it is just search engines indexing as that may mean more visitor's will find me soon.

vangogh
10-06-2008, 08:58 PM
AwStats misses a lot of bots. It can only identify the ones it knows about or the ones that identify themselves as a bot. For example if I wrote a bot now and visited your site, AwStats would likely report it as a human visitor.

Odds are the traffic is a handful of new bots that found your site and are crawling it for one reason or another. It could be a search engine AwStats doesn't know, or a random person searching the web for information. It could also be a bot looking for holes in your applications to exploit.

If you have some IPs search Google for them and see what is returned. You might find some info about that IP. You can also look into the latest visitors stats (I assume you're on cPanel and have that link) and then look for the useragent that matches the IPs you're seeing. That will give you more clues as to who or what has been visiting.

You can also download your raw server logs and go through those to find more info.

billbenson
10-06-2008, 10:08 PM
For what it's worth, I've seen webtrends recommended from some good webmasters as a good stats package. I don't believe it's cheap though. I have no personal experience with it.

vangogh
10-07-2008, 12:54 AM
Another analytics package that gets great recommendations is Mint (http://haveamint.com/). It's $30 for the software (look in the FAQ for pricing), which you host on your server and then I think they charge at times for upgrades. Overall it's an inexpensive solution.

Of Google Analytics is free and has most everything you'll likely need

Paul Elliott
12-09-2008, 03:40 PM
Here is a good discussion of Google Analytics, its history, (some of) its flaws, and what they mean.

The disturbing inaccuracy behind Google Analytics - iMediaConnection.com (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/21144.asp)

Paul

vangogh
12-09-2008, 07:20 PM
Interesting article Paul. I agree and disagree with it.

I'd still consider a bounce as a visit. I don't think a visit is one that necessarily means two or more pages of your site were viewed. A perfect example is someone who might visit your blog, read your latest post, and then leave. Technically they bounced since they didn't visit any page other than the one they landed on, but I would certainly consider that a visit.

However it is important to know who's clicking beyond the landing page and who's bouncing and also how much time both spend on your site.

One way some like to look at visits/bounces is to separate out your visitors by how long they spend on your site. Maybe place all those who spend under 30 seconds on your site in a different group than those who spend more than 30 seconds. Then you can calculate bounces, etc for each group distinctly to get a better picture of what's happening on your site.

Statistics tell the truth, but they don't tell the whole truth. Sometimes they even lie. And you can use any set of statistics to prove most anything you want by selectively choosing which numbers to highlight.

billbenson
12-09-2008, 08:12 PM
On the bounce thing, I agree with VG. In my case, they probably got there because of AdWords. Click on an ad, phone number is there, they call and place an order. They only visited one page. That's a visit for me! Probably the most important stats are uniques, even if the only went to one page and page visits.

So like most stuff on the internet, its one of those "depends" things.

Webtrends comes highly recommended from a webmaster I respect. I don't have any personal experience with it. It's not free.

orion_joel
12-10-2008, 12:31 AM
I do have google analytics on all my sites, however i while i was looking at the numbers for a while they were disproportionate to the actual figures that i had been tracking. So while maybe that means the figure i have been using are inaccurate or maybe i have set it up wrong, i don't know. But i pretty much have stuck with tracking just the totals on awstats, even though they are going to be maybe just as inaccurate if not more so inaccurate in that they include non viewing visitors and such, but they are consistent with the previous stats i been keeping, and give me a better idea of just what is going on.