Chrenkoff has asked, “Does anyone actually read blogs?”
Why he asks is that he gets many view times of 0:00 and that seems odd. His commenters have lots of responses and possible answers, but none, including me, really know why that is. I know I see the same thing here, yet the average visit time is about two minutes. Seems odd, does it not?
Actually, I wonder about many of these things that get tracked. Another example is the Ecosystem. I don’t really know what kind of measure it really is for the popularity of a site. It tracks links from other sites. Someone like Glenn Reynolds doesn’t get a hit from me there unless I link to his site in a post because I access InstaPundit through a bookmark. Same with PowerLine and others. On the other hand, revolving blogrolls as on Blogs for Bush create a new link any time a new post is generated. I’ve seen my own go from Marsupial to Mammal and back in the space of 24 hours.
In Arthur’s case, as well as that of other more popular blogs, is the number of comments they get. I think that’s probably the most reliable indicator of traffic.
The time spent on the page isn’t measured, it is the time from the first download of the page, to the last. If no secondary pages are “clicked” and the intro isn’t refreshed, the time will be zero.
Comments remain the only way to know that we’ve been read. And given some of them, maybe not.
Comment by Marvin — September 28, 2004 @ 5:38 pm
LOL! I’ve had my share of those!
Comment by Bunker — September 28, 2004 @ 6:17 pm
Thanks Marvin. That clears things up a little for me. I was worried that my little screeds were going to waste LOL.
Comment by RedFalcon — September 28, 2004 @ 9:59 pm
May not stay long on the page, usually print for longer persual (also links) and to be able to pass around to other folks who don’t look at anything but the headlines
Comment by Nancy — September 29, 2004 @ 12:30 pm
If there are many people like me, comments will way underestimate readership. I comment on maybe 1 of 500 entries I read across the many sites I like to visit (including yours).
Comment by Bob M — September 30, 2004 @ 7:48 am
Bob, I appreciate the comment. What I mean is that link counts are pretty unreliable as a measure of popularity, and sites which collect a lot of comments are ones which really get the traffic. That’s why some remove comment capability–they get overloaded.
Little Sister, stay as long as you want, and don’t fret over the time. I check my stats primarily to find who links to me so I can find new sources of information.
Comment by Bunker — September 30, 2004 @ 8:34 am