Click Inflation

As some of you may know, I work for a news website. Any time there is a major news event, traffic to the site jumps. What is curious is that after the jump traffic will drop, but not all the way down to the previous level. Some of the people you acquire via the major news event will stay and become regular visitors of your site.

Such was the case with this little blog and Clara's birth. People kept coming back and reading stories about the little one, her parents, and their happenings in this strange world. And as they kept coming back I began to obsess about my Google Analytics.

I've posted about Google Analytics before (and before). A few months ago while tracking our site's statistics I noticed that each time someone clicks to view the comments on a post it was going to blogger.com. While on that blogger.com page the user would lose the nifty look of our blog and, devastatingly so, the pageviews wouldn't get recorded in Google Analytics because the domain wasn't kristinandoliver.blogspot.com.

People were viewing the blog and I don't get to know all about it. BAD KHARMA. I have to know how many people come, have to track how the numbers go up and down over time, to see how posts on different topics impact pageviews, frequency of visit, depth of visit, etc. I have to know.

So I changed the "Comments" link to point to the individual post pages. This way comments are viewed in our template and Google Analytics records the pageview. Sigh. What a nice thing to have happen.

Another great feature in Google Analytics is the ability to track from whence our visitors cometh. We've had visitors from twelve different countries (United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Singapore, Ireland, Germany, Zimbabwe, Guyana, Greece, Korea, Australia) and from thirty-eight of the fifty states. I found a site that creates a map showing all the states you've visited. In my case, it shows the states from which we have had visitors. If you know anyone in one of the grey states below, feel free to pass our link along!


Create your own visited states map.

Love of Google Analytics Part II

One of my favorite things to view in Google Analytics is the map that shows the geographic location of the visitors to our blog. The other night my brother Jared and I were comparing the places our traffic comes from when I realized I've had two international visits. The first is from London. Not too surprising as I've linked to someone living in London off a cousin's blog. The one that shocked me was Zimbabwe.

You heard me right Zimbabwe. To be more precise: Harare, Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. I'm dying to know who our African visitor is.

Click on image to view full size.

Related Post: Google Analytics

Google Analytics

I've often wonder who visits our site. The URL has been passed around to family, friends, coworkers, etc. I was poking around for free web counters Monday night when I found a post on a message board recommending Google Analytics. I checked it out and was surprised at how easy to use it is. So, I added it to our blog.

It's easy! Visit the site, register or use your Google username to sign in, then they provide you with some code to drop in your blogger template and - BAM - you have charts and graphs that show who is coming to your site, how often, and from where.

Check out our graphs as of tonight (click for larger image):Thanks go out to ericandjenarecute.com and moorlaps.blogspot.com for being our top referrers!