Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

metrics

For having a site with relatively low traffic, I’m unreasonably obsessed with keeping tabs on my site metrics, particularly when people I don’t expect tell me that they’ve visited my blog. I’m always curious about which of my generally banal posts garners the most interest. And search terms reveal intriguing trends. (For example, my earlier posts about the fate of John Basedow, the origin of the chimichanga and the ill-fated Ford Sportka UK ads seem to generate the most search engine referrals.)

Until this spring, I relied on the (very) limited Analog stats provided by my webhost. Then Michaela turned me on to StatCounter, which offers more granular detail than I ever thought I wanted. (The drawback, though, is that for free accounts, StatCounter only keeps track of the most recent 100 pageviews worth of data.)

I’ve also started toying with the public beta of MeasureMap, a new product from Adaptive Path. In true Adaptive Path form, the interface is supremely clean and easy to use, and it’s targeted specifically at monitoring blog traffic. I’d consider switching over on the basis of that clean interface, but the data it offers isn’t nearly as comprehensive as that offered by StatCounter. Plus, it’s beginning to irritate me that there’s no way to exclude specific IPs or browsers from being tracked, which means that my own site usage is being counted, skewing the traffic numbers.

This evening, I stumbled upon Mint, another really nicely-designed stats package. Advantages I notice offhand: 1) I can install it on my own domain, rather than have to access my stats through a third-party Web site; 2) it’s extensible, and the software’s makers are trying to encourage a developer community to expand upon it. There’s even a Dashboard Widget available to display a site’s most recent traffic numbers. It’s $30 for the software, but it might be worth it.

(On a side note, I found Mint through an ad on the Signals vs. Noise blog from 37signals. They’re part of an advertising network called The Deck which features, shockingly, 1) a very limited number of ad positions, and 2) advertisers I’m actually interested in, who seem to be in the same mold as Deck sponsors 37S and A List Apart. It’s a rare thing that I’m actually interested in Web advertising, but here’s the rare case where the advertising is eye-catching and relevant and I’m not being hit over the head with it.)