Web Stats: Sessions, Page Views, and Hits
Yesterday, without any fanfare, I passed a small milestone; I have now served up over one million Google Ad Units. (Which means, I suppose, that I've served up close to five million ads, since most of my ad units have five ads). I feel like McDonalds. Millions and millions served. Anyway, in honor of this little milestone, I thought I would write a little bit about web stats - statistics on visitors to websites. (And there is a helpful tip for webmasters down near the bottom, under the heading "Hits").But First...
But first, if you're interested, take one last look at Articles For Educators: Free Lesson Plans and Classroom Activity Ideas. I say "one last look" because this site is soon going bye-bye.
It's not that I'm getting rid of the site...but rather, that by the end of the week I expect to have an all new version of the site posted, which will be more streamlined, easier to navigate (I hope), and have a few more interesting features, including recommended resources tied to each article. I'll post another entry when the new version of the site is online.
Web Stats
I've been watching my web statistics pretty carefully the last few weeks on The Problem Site, since I redesigned the site, and wanted to make sure people weren't having any trouble navigating the site. I've been pleased to see that the site has really had a nice traffic boost. Here's a chunk of one of my statistical graphs for The Problem Site. This graph shows the number of visitors each day (technically, the number of sessions, which is slightly different, since a single visitor can have multiple sessions on the site). I've cropped out a big section in the middle, so you can see the end of 2004, the first couple months of 2005, and the current statistics.
It's interesting to notice what happens about the middle of December; when schools go on vacation for the holidays, the traffic takes a slight dip, which is to be expected. There is also a two-day-dip every seven days; the site doesn't get as much traffic on Saturday and Sunday as it does the rest of the week. Not at all surprising.
As you can see, the amount of traffic has been increasing over time; in October the number of sessions per day is larger than it was earlier in the year...and there was one day when there was an absolutely enormous number of sessions. Then, around the end of October, I posted the new version of the site, which is much easier to navigate. There were two almost immediate results. One was that people started staying on the site much longer (there's another graph for that, which I won't bother posting), and the other was that I started getting a lot more visitors. This is largely due to the fact that a couple of my more popular pages (the home page and the online games page) were much better optimized for search engines.
Page Views
But here's where it gets interesting...although I've had a boost of over 100% in the number of sessions per day since last December, and a boost in the amount of time those visitors are staying on the site, the number of page views, and the number of hits per day have changed by a much smaller percentage. How can this be?
The answer can be found in the hangman game, which is hands down the most popular game on the site. About the time I posted the newer version of the site, I also posted a new version of hangman: New And Improved Hangman Game. If you compare these two hangman games, you may notice that one of the big differences between the two is this: in the old version of the game, the page reloads every time you make a guess. This does not happen in the new version. Thus, the old version of the game generates anywhere from five to fifteen page views for each game played, while the new version only generates two page views (the game page and the "game over" page) for each game played. Since this is the most popular game on the site, that change significantly changes the number of overall page views. But even with this drastic change, the number of page views on the site has significantly increased since last year.
Hits
The "hits" counter measures not sessions or page views, but the number of files served up, including not just pages, but also images, and other file types. This is probably the least useful statistic, in terms of understanding your site traffic. Why? Because all you have to do is throw an extra image or two on your main pages, and that number takes an immediate jump. This number can tell you more about the structure of your site than it does your site's audience.
Ironically (and here's where I'm ending up for the day) many SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers) use hits as their yardstick for measuring your site's activity. "Hire me to optimize your site," (often at an absurdly high rate) they say, "and I'll make your site get X thousand hits per day."
Big deal. I've seen search engine optimization companies do both of the following:
- Add a lot of little images to the site, so every page view generates about fifty hits
- Spam people with emails that contain images from your site, so each time the email gets opened it generates a hit on your site, even though the person receiving the email never visited your site, never saw the site url, or the company name.
So. Finally, my tip to webmasters. If you are dealing with an SEO who is bragging about how many hits you get, tell him you aren't interested in that number. You want to know how many page views you are getting, and you want to know how many sessions and how long they're staying on your site.
Remember that the SEO industry is one of the most unscrupulous areas of web business, because most of their clients don't know enough about the industry to really know if they're delivering on their promises. Thus, human nature comes out, and you pay the price.
Posted On Nov 14, 2005 at 5:40 AM
On Nov 14, 2005 Trent wrote: Some of that is a little above me. But I have played hangman on your site. Is that worth a comment?
Doug Replied: hey, if it's worth your time to type it, it's worth my time to post it!
On Nov 15, 2005 Trent wrote: Actually, I found this post to be very educational. Especially the difference between the Page hits and Runs Batted In.......... or was that a different site?
Great stuff, just one question, how is it that you know so much about everything?
Have a great day,
Trent
Doug Replied: naw...I've got you fooled. Actually, I know very little about a whole lot of things!
On Nov 16, 2005 BackStage wrote: You'll quickly learn that many of us in the Twitchell family are pretty good repositories of pretty useless information.
Did you know that Americans eat an average of 19 pounds of turkey per person per year?
Doug Replied: Now if only I could remember that statistic about the number of spiders we eat (accidentally) on average.
On Nov 16, 2005 BackStage wrote: I'm pretty sure it's 8.
On Nov 16, 2005 Trent wrote: I knew there was something about you Twitchell's that I liked. I love to swim in pools of useless information.
Anyone here know anything about the average amount of germs on monetary bills?
On Nov 17, 2005 Trent wrote: Anyone ???? ...............................
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