. . . and statistics

Open Parachute has posted his regular monthly blog rankings:

There are now 279 New Zealand blogs in the list.

The top 30 are:

Visit Rank	Blog	Visits/month	Page Views/month
1	Whale oil beef hooked	767409	1628849
2	Kiwiblog	374944	648727
3	The Standard	193319	438265
4	The Daily Blog	181888	281529
5	Auckland Transport Blog	142709	148616
6	Throng New Zealand	52676	101376
7	Sciblogs	46993	65302
8	NewZeal	41815	54563
9	Liturgy	39849	55479
10	The Dim-Post	38214	52953
11	Canterbury Atheists	34294	36159
12	No Right Turn	31480	40742
13	Keeping stock	25187	40021
14	No Minister	23892	31330
15	The REAL Steve Gray	21122	22357
16	Homepaddock	20620	50402
17	coNZervative	18573	18758
18	Colour me there	17209	22516
19	Fields of Blood	13774	21793
20	TVHE	13693	19495
21	Hot Topic	12695	17613
22	Imperator Fish	11814	17214
23	Liberation	11069	18453
24	Sportsfreak	10386	10510
25	Offsetting Behaviour	9683	13687
26	Lance Wiggs	9074	10741
27	Open Parachute	8664	12530
28	MandM	8395	10061
29	Matte Shot	7579	12341
30	Tikorangi The Jury Garden	7318	11162

There was an unusual spike in visits here on Monday the 5th and Tuesday the 6th.

Nothing in the search terms indicated a reason nor was tehre anything out of the ordinary about any of the posts or comments that day to explain it but statcounter, recorded a similar spike.

Page Views	Unique Visits		First Time Visits		Returning Visits
Total		54,591		44,881		36,355		8,526
Average		1,761		1,448		1,173		275

Friday	9th August 2013	936	636	390	246
Thursday	8th August 2013	1,032	724	473	251
Wednesday	7th August 2013	1,257	809	511	298
Tuesday	6th August 2013	3,244	2,942	2,641	301
Monday	5th August 2013	19,128	18,565	18,197	368
Sunday	4th August 2013	1,104	684	451	233
Saturday	3rd August 2013	1,873	1,496	1,274	222
Friday	2nd August 2013	1,205	721	421	300
Thursday	1st August 2013	1,303	765	457	308

Stats stuttering

Sitemeter usually has a slightly more conservative total than other visit counters but the trend is usually the same.

But on Friday and yesterday it stuttered – no visits on the 27th and only 58 visits and 62 page views on the 28th?

Anyone else notice something similar on your blog?

7002nd post

Just noticed that this morning’s history post was the 7,000th which makes this the 7002nd.

The first was written almost three years ago – on April 22nd – and in that time they’ve been 13, 435 comments. 

The WordPress counter which takes in repeated visits not just unique ones has recorded 650,624 views.

I didn’t start using Sitemeter until July – it’s counted 440,876 unique visitors since then: 

Total

440,876

There have also been 108,171 spam comments which indicates many of the visitors weren’t here to read the posts but just dropped by to leave unwanted remarks.

Sigh – I’d better not give up my day job.

Stat time again

Open Parachute has published his monthly blog rankings.

They rely on public access to Sitemeter stats which is why some popular blogs don’t feature.

Sitemeter always seems to be less generous with its counting than Stat Counter.

In September Sitemeter recorded 16,528 unique visitors for this blog and 22,818 total visits. While Stat Counter recorded 17,472 unique visitors and 24,206 total visits.

To put that in perspective the top three blogs on Open Parachute’s chart got 227207 visits (Kiwiblog); 147877 visits (New Zeal) and  134 942 visits (Throng New Zealand).

Stat time

August stats:

Posts: 208

Comments: 588ish (quick count).

 Statcounter: Total visits:  25, 013 unique visits: 18089.

Sitemeter:      Total visits: 24,010,  unique visits: 16220.

Referrals:

nominister.blogspot.com/	1,827
nzconservative.blogspot.com/	586
kiwiblog.co.nz/blogroll	571
asianinvasion2006.blogspot.com/	554
kiwiblog.co.nz/	387
pmofnz.blogspot.com/	153
keepingstock.blogspot.com/	115
roarprawn.blogspot.com/	114
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/	69
WordPress Dashboard	67
thehandmirror.blogspot.com/	65
quoteunquotenz.blogspot.com/	55
macdoctor.co.nz/	46
nzblogosphere.blogspot.com/	35
farmgirllive.blogspot.com/	35
dimpost.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/rip-…	35
poneke.wordpress.com/	34
oswaldbastable.blogspot.com/	27
google.com/reader/view/	23
stephenfranks.co.nz/?p=2915	22
netvibes.com/privatepage/1	21
google.co.nz/	18
en.wordpress.com/tag/busted-blonde/	17
google.com/reader/view/?hl=en	16
motella.blogspot.com/	16
kiwiblog.co.nz/must_read_blogs	15
google.co.nz/reader/view/?hl=en…	15
macilree.blogspot.com/	14
google.co.in/	13
google.com.au/reader/view/	13
poneke.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/sorry…	13
keepingstock.blogspot.com/2010/08/nbr…	13
antidismal.blogspot.com/	13
tumeke.blogspot.com/	12
pasturetoprofit.blogspot.com/	11
offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/	10
tineye.com/search/7cbd82b6b0ae9e52f5c…	9
roarprawn.blogspot.com/2010/08/bit-sa…	9
beingfrank.co.nz/	9
sepatuputihku.xpac.info/home.php	8

 

	Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Total	160,995	121,338	79,418	41,920
Average	17,888	13,482	8,824	4,658
Month	Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Sep 2010	398	287	192	95
Aug 2010	25,013	18,089	11,673	6,416
Jul 2010	24,036	16,836	10,814	6,022
Jun 2010	20,543	15,157	9,547	5,610
May 2010	19,351	14,886	9,489	5,397
Apr 2010	18,448	13,979	9,267	4,712
Mar 2010	19,844	15,715	10,782	4,933
Feb 2010	16,534	13,057	8,736	4,321
Jan 2010	16,828	13,332	8,918	4,414

              

homepaddock This Year’s Visits and Page Views by Month

UPDATE: Open Parachute has the August blog rankings. If your blog isn’t one of the 214 ranked it might be because you need to have sitemeter with public access to stats.

Vatican visiting

Sitemeter not only tracks the number of visitors to a blog, it also records where they come from.

When I checked tongight, I was intrigued to find that someone from the Vatican City had visited.

Last time I copied the pie chart of visitors, technological wizardry which I don’t understand, allowed it to change. I’m not sure if that always happens, if it does you’ll have to take my word that when I posted this, it did show a visitor from the Vatican.

Stat time of the month

It’s stat time of the month again when Tim Selwyn of Tumeke! calls for blog stats for the Blogosphere Rankings.

In September at Homepaddock:

Sitemeter recorded 13,478 unique visitors. Stat Counter more generously recorded 15, 117 unique visitors.

 There were 238 posts which received a total of 497 comments.

The four most commented on posts were: 33 on Coal to fertiliser plant for Southland? on 25.9; 17 on Kiwirail must pay its way on 30.9;   16 on Greenpeace has wrong target for wrong reasons on 17.9 and 12 each on  Last cab has the mana and the power on  15.9 and The honourable member on 29.9.

The top 10 referring blogs were:

nominister.blogspot.com	1,580
asianinvasion2006.blogspot.com	924
kiwiblog.co.nz/blogroll	340
nzconservative.blogspot.com	273
kismetfarm.blogspot.com	169
keepingstock.blogspot.com	138
pmofnz.blogspot.com	126
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com	75
macdoctor.co.nz	70
roarprawn.blogspot.com	69

Thank you for popping in and an electronic bunch of daffodils to all who left a comment.

Sitemeter

homepaddock This Year’s Visits and Page Views by Month

The graph from StatCounter doesn’t want to copy but here are the figures:

Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Total		21,862	15,117	8,918	6,199
Average		729	504	297	207

Naked Stats

Three bloggers rank blogs. They use different methods and not surprisingly get different results.

Tumeke!,  has the longest running ranking. Halfdone  joined in a few months ago and more recent is Open Parachute who posted today about ranking with Sitemeter data.

There’s a school of thought that the only reliable way to rank blogs is by using actual sitemeter data for visits. Unfortunately, most blogs don’t make this information public. Perhaps if more did bloggers could compare their statistics with those for other sites or have a listed ranking. This would help their interpretation.

It depends on what you’re ranking of course, visits are only one measure, comments are another and some blogs get fewer visitors but more comments. But quantity isn’t necessarily the same as quality anyway.

However, since it’s all just a bit of fun and there’s no reason to keep stats secret, should anyone want to know how many people pop into Homepaddock, what they look at and where they come from, click on the Sitemeter logo above the Clustermap at the bottom of the sidebar and it’s all there for the world to see.

I started blogging last April but didn’t install Sitemeter until part way through July, since then it’s recorded:

homepaddock This Year’s Visits by Month

What intrigues me most is where people come from and I wonder if visitors from far flung corners of the world come by accident or design.

homepaddock Country Share

You can click on Clustermap to see where people come from too. It also counts visitors but is less generous than Sitemeter.

What’s in a number?

Monkey with Typewriter is discouraged by a lack of feedback so has written his last post.

I’m sorry because I enjoy his satirical view.

Some of the fun in blogging is the feedback and it’s easy enough to count comments but it’s harder to gauge readership because some people check blogs through RSS readings rather than visits. And while I won’t pretend to understand how Alexa gets its numbers I’ve noticed they don’t seem to have any correlation with the Sitemeter stats.

In spite of a ranking of 12 in Half Done’s February blog ranking,  and a rise of three to 12th in Tumeke’s January ranking ,  Homepaddock is at 23 in Open Parachute’s rating   and I could be upset by the apparent fall or happy to be so high when there’s hundreds of NZ blogs around.

But what stands out for me is not the places but the difference between them. If you look at the gulf between Kiwiblog’s well-deserved grasp on the top spot and compare the numbers of visitors, posts and comments that keep him there with mine I’m just paddling in the shallows.

That doesn’t matter to me. I enjoy the feedback and appreciate comments, I also check visitor stats now and then and like it when they increase but if my blogging depended on numbers of either or both I’d have given up months ago.

UPDATE: MWT fans can relax, the monkey has had second thoughts.

Homepaddock visitor record

Yesterday Sitemeter recorded the most visitors to Homepaddock since I started blogging at the end of April.

A total of 1,160 unique visits was recorded – although to put that in to perspective Kiwiblog probably has more than that an hour.

The reason for the interest yesterday? A short post on the photo finish in the Melbourne Cup, written because I happened to be sitting at the computer when the news crossed live to the commentary.