Get excited… It’s the web analytics post
eric.delcroix
It is often said that statistics don’t tell the full story.
In the case of my blog statistics, this is untrue. They tell the complete story.
Total views: 275
Busiest day: 54 — Thursday, September 10, 2009
Views today: 8
Average per day: 10
The Watchdog blog had issues from day one. Firstly, I was forced to change my theme several times and, for the first few weeks, my comments page was switched off. This, I can only presume, did not help.
Then I moved from my RAWS page to the more user-friendly WordPress format. I posted a link on Facebook notifying people of the change and voila! My highest number of visitors was clocked the day of that change (a still unimpressive 54). Facebook, much like Kyle Sandilands, is clearly a great self-promotional tool.
Obviously, I can take a wild stab in the dark that most – if not all – of my visitors are from the graduate diploma in journalism. Thank you, friends, for visiting the page. I’ve also noticed the highest number of visits come on Thursdays, which, being the day before our online journalism tutorials, is most likely sparked by a curiosity to see whether I’ve penned my post for the week. Since the new blog went up (10 Sept) I have had 275 visitors to my blog. I guess it could be worse.
I would severely doubt I have international visitors to my blog. My posts have so far been utterly Australia-centric and, if I was to improve on my statistics, I should perhaps do some posts on broader world issues.
I have generally tried to capitalise on the ‘burning issues’ in the media: topical “newsworthy” items such as Kyle Sandilands, Father Bob and Eddie MacGuire. Sure, it was a shameless attempt to pick up Australian readers from Google. It may have worked, it may not have.
I probably need to work on my headlines in order to receive better Google traffic. Aesthetically, my posts could do with a touch up, also. My default format appears to be photo – text – ironic Youtube clip. I should mix things up and see what happens.
I’ll put all these ideas into play next week.
The Watchdog 
Dave,
Great insight on the neurotic Thursday phenomenon. I’m sure I’m not the only one checking to see that my topic hasn’t been poached, or even worse, finding out I am one of a minority not to have put anything up yet. You have uncovered as much about the state of mind of our student group as you have about the nature of internet traffic.
I’m sure main stream media outlets would love to be able to analise their markets with such simplicity.
“well, people on tend to look on Thursdays, so lets make all of our staff part-time, on day a week…”