Comparing Stat Counters–Totally Frustrated
Since moving my blog to Typepad, from WordPress I have been really frustrated by a couple of blog biggies:
1. Blog Traffic. When I launched my blog on WordPress I was surprised–I enjoyed a steady stream of traffic almost from day 1 and for a blog only 1.5 months old I was averaging 50+ unique visitors per day. This beats any other blogs I’ve had by far. I knew that I had tapped into a couple of very popular interests. Since I’ve moved to Typepad I’ve experienced almost 0 traffic–really. I’m in the process of trying to figure out what the contributing factors are. What could be my issues:
- I imported all my posts from my WordPress blog and so Google and other search engines think I’ve now posted duplicate content–maybe, I’m not sure. I deleted the WordPress posts, posted one final post that directs former visitors to my new blog and set the old WordPress blog to private so search engines could not crawl it anymore and "find" it. I’m hoping if this is one of the factors that eventually the former WordPress posts will run out of the system and Google and others will again rank me fairly high for the appropriate keyword searches.
- Typepad uses Categories to label posts, whereas WordPress uses Tags. I ready to set out on a rather expansive exploration of tags versus categories. WordPress’s homepage utilizes a large and visible tag cloud and that page was the referring source for quite a number of visits to my WordPress blog. Typepad does not provide a homepage like that. Blogcatalog also was a primary referral source for my WordPress posts, so far on Typepad I’ve had 0 referrals from Blogcatalog even though I’ve updated my account and blog information with the site.
2. Blog Stats. I feel like I’m obsessed with blog stats right now, but if you’ve ever had access to comprehensive and GOOD stats data then I’m sure you can feel my pain when faced with less than anything but. WordPress’s built in blog stats are exceptional for a free blog platform–really. I anticipated checking into a basic counter tool, but this is a rather comprehensive stat utility. One of the WordPress blog stat features is the keyword data–the actual search keywords/phrases that users typed into a search field that led them to your post. If you’re a serious blogger data like this is pure gold.
Typepad’s complimentary blog stats? Ouch. Useless really, completely unable to even sift out your own visits to your site; no keyword info and no ability to checkup on past referral data, just past numbers. So I’ve tried configuring stats through Feedburner and still something’s wrong; I’ve now embedded Google Analytics and StatCounter and will do a side-by-side test. Already I have a fave: Stat Counter. I’ve been able to set it to eliminate my own visits to my blog–how ridiculously obvious. If you have a stat counter that cannot be configured to recognize and exclude your own site visits then it seems relatively primitive and useless. Google Analytics is quite comprehensive and I’m sure allows you to configure as such it’s just not as apparent as it is with Stat Counter. Google Analytics "looks" more like a technical dashboard and really is designed to help website owners strategize online advertising campaigns such as AdWords.
If by some chance you happen by and have any insight–lemme know, but I really am just talking to myself right now and I know it–that’s the madness.
June 26, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Have you tried submitting a sitemap with Google? That is fairly easy with TypePad, but impossible with WordPress. And WordPress uses categories too, just like TypePad, except WordPress also has tags, albeit they do nothing in terms of search engine other than WordPress’ own search, or so I have been told. I have to agree with you on the stats though, not much use in TypePad.