Thursday, April 30, 2009

Navel gazing

This morning Cardgrrl posted a note about her Google Analytics stats. I've had G.A. running for about a year and a half now, but have really done very little with it other than tracking daily page hits, and once in a while seeing what searches bring new people by. Until reading Cardgrrl's post, I didn't even know that it had the capability of tracking unique visitors, and while looking for how to do that, I found a bunch of other ways of analyzing reader data that I didn't know were there. Thought I'd share some of them with you, using the past 365 days as the time frame.

While I have enough of a competitive streak that I'm capable of deliberate one-upsmanship, this honestly isn't being posted to brag that I have more readers than Cardgrrl. If Shamus or Pauly or Iggy or Wicked Chops were to post their numbers, it would show how small-time I really am. I'm well aware that I have more visitors than some poker blogs, fewer than others, and I'm perfectly content with that being as it is. As the title to this post indicates, this is just me expressing my curiosity about what's going on, not boasting (nor complaining, either).

Here are the most popular posts/pages that people look at. Not surprisingly, the Cannery backroom story was far and away the most viewed, since notice of it got spread rather far and wide.




Here's a list of what people are looking for in search engines that lands them on this site. I have noted in the past how strange it is that my rather offhand comments about whether there are any gay professional pokers consistently top the list (after the obvious searches to find the whole blog), with Tom Dwan being the one that started my pondering.




Here's where people are coming from, net-wise:




And here's their geographical distribution:










How long do viewers stick around on average?



I went through the full list of dates (not shown above) to see what caused the most prolonged page views. Nothing surprising. They correlated almost perfectly with the days that I wrote either the most or the longest posts. The nice thing about that is it suggests that people actually read through what I put up, even on the days that it takes longer.

Unique visitors:



32,551 of you???? Good grief, haven't all of you people got anything better to be doing with your time?
:-)

It's nice to see that there is reasonably steady growth over time (excepting the obvious big Cannery spike).



Incidentally, that up-and-down fluctuation you see is an extremely consistent weekly variation, with a drop on the weekends followed by a spike on Mondays. This suggests that people are reading while at work, and catching up on Saturday and Sunday posts on Monday. Tsk, tsk, tsk! Hey! That's not what they're paying you for!

This next one has me a bit puzzled. I'm not sure why the most common duration of visit is less than ten seconds. Best guess is that means people check in, find nothing new since the last visit, and move on.




The "recency" numbers took me a while to decipher. 74% are "0 days ago." Obviously, this can't mean that 74% of all page views in the last year took place within the past 24 hours. I assume it means that out of all of the visits in the past year, 74% of the time the viewer's previous visit had been within the past 24 hours. Assuming that's right, it means that a very high fraction of visitors are daily (or even more-than-daily) regulars, which I find more humbling and flattering than I know how to convey.





The "visitor loyalty" suggests, not surprisingly, that there was a big chunk of people who were looking for one specific thing, found it, and didn't look around much or come back. However, after that group the next most common is the bunch of you that peeked in more than 200 times, which, again, is just mind-boggling to me. It is often the case that I can't understand why anybody would be so interested in what I might have to say, but I never cease being grateful that it is so.

17 comments:

Matthew Yauch said...

Congrats on the success! I catch up on what you have to say because I moved to Vegas to get into the Poker. I'm trying to be a dealer this summer but I'm also eventually going to go pro so I like to see what a pro thinks about on a daily basis.

Your insight into the dealers you play with is pretty helpful to me.

Of course this post I thought there were going to be belly dancer pics.

WindBreak247 said...

I assume this doesn't take into effect RSS Readers, like me. I've always wondered if there's a way to track RSS subscriptions. Just think how many more people are reading w/o actually visiting the site.

I didn't know Google did this either, but its also no surprise. Thanks for the share!

Anonymous said...

tom dwan gay is a big search hit for your blog...hahahaha I didn't realize that was even something someone cared about anymore in these days? ...... gowhitesox99

102 days til vegas

Matt said...

I am at work, multiple daily view reader.

Some of the reasons I like your blog so much:

-No huge ego

-Stakes we can relate to

-A sense of humor, intelligence and an interest of things outside of poker

-You come off as the type of guy it would be fun to grab a beer with and have a chat

Keep it up!

-Matt

Anonymous said...

Concerning the "less than 10 seconds" frequency you mentioned, I had a thought. Your blog is the home page on my home computer. Thus, every time I open a browser and go to a different site you get such a hit. Maybe I am not alone.

Scott said...

Great work Grump.

I think that little dot above Atlanta in NW Georgia is me.

Keep up the great blog.

hotrod13 said...

I'm the dot in Oklahoma, really enjoy your blog, hit it once or twice a day. Keep it up.

hotrod

Sauza said...

Wow. Great stats. I'll admit that I too am a daily, and most often 3-4 times a day visitor. Ok, I needs to pay more attention to work, but Poker Grump and allvegaspoker are what really occupy my mind when I'm not actually playing.

I was quite surprised though on one stat. It was the list of what people are looking for in search engines that lands them on your site. Item 12. HEY! That's me! lol.

That's twice now that I have been sorta mentioned on your blog. The first was last June when posted your foto playing the AVP. You were in seat 5 I think, and I was in 6.

Keep it up, and I'll keep enjoying it 3-4 times a day!

Sauza said...

Oh yeah, and to whom ever is reading this.... go ahead and click through a couple of those google ads he has there in the upper left side.

Rakewell said...

Sauza: I remember that. Your name is Bob, right?

Sauza said...

Yep. Great memory.

I imagine that the reason for the stat is a post I put on AVP last week for your PS tourney. If I read it correctly, 135 clicked the link I proded in the post. Cool. Hopefully it gained a few extra players. BTW, great tourney.

Unknown said...

Who the hell is yappy dave, and what does it mean that the bounce rate for people using that search term is so low?

The world may never know.

Actually, I'm kind of suprised none of this has come up when you acquired your few advertisements.

Anonymous said...

I started out reading poker blogs years ago. Mainly because I am into poker. What I have learned about blogs is that good blogs are ones where you get the feeling you know the person from reading it. It is like the author becomes a friend. I believe blogs really can't be categorized into poker blogs, mommy blogs, finance blogs. Like I said good blogs are ones where you feel like you know the author. You check it because you want to know what is going on with the author. Also a good blog is one that is updated at least 5 times a week.

Chris in Dallas said...

You're definitely part of my morning rotation of websites...you, allvegaspoker.com and vegasrex...to list three of about a hundred I hit before I start working...

gadzooks64 said...

There is a way to see how many people subscribe via Google Reader.

If you use Google Reader, you can click the add a subscription button and enter "Poker Grump". A list of possible matches - along with the number of subscribers! - will appear.

It would appear that you have 210 Google Reader subscribers, one of which is me!

Irwin15 said...

I've followed this blog for a couple of years now. At one time I even went back to post one to read all the entries. Like others have said they key to a great blog is getting to know that person, being able to relate to what they write about, to find it interesting and for them to be funny.

I find that this blog has all those things. Also, if I were to take the plung and become a poker pro in Vegas, I think I would take a very simular approach to the game as Poker Grump...kudos to a great blog. I hope you continue to write for a long time.

Irwin15 said...

One thing that I've noticed on your blog is that your external links go straight to their page without opening up a new page. This contributes to a lot to people leaving your page and not coming back.

It's been a while since I've done webpages but if you use a target on your href links you can have the link open up in a new page and your page remains open. This will enable them to come back to your page after they are done with the external link if they so chose without having to look up your page again.

Look here for detail about what I'm talking about.

http://www.fontstuff.com/frontpage/fptut05.htm