Wednesday, December 15, 2010

First Annual Blog Report


Google Analytics map overlay showing the countries where visitors have been located, keyed in shades of green. Not too many blank spots left!

A little late, since this blog is now 14 months old, but I'm pleased to report that it's read all over the world. Woodworking is a universal endeavor with a long history. There's clearly a wide interest in working with hand tools.

First post was October 23, 2009; this will be the 56th. I added Google Analytics on February 24, 2010, so all statistics are from Analytics reports starting on that date. I also added a modest level of advertising at that point.

The best thing about Analytics for me is the feedback it provides. Going by the number of comments and emails I get, you'd think nobody was reading this. But I can see from the statistics that many people are indeed reading it, and I hope getting as much enjoyment as I get writing it.

Now, to the numbers. One of my favorite quotes, mistakenly attributed by Mark Twain to Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". These figures are subject to some error and interpretation.

(For the record, my other most favorite quote is this little exchange between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla; Edison: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."; Tesla: "A little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.")

There are some counts where the location is shown as "(not set)", so I can't attribute them to any particular country. There's also a counter called "Bounce Rate," which means someone only visited one page before leaving the site. Presumably this is due either to someone doing a search that lands here and it wasn't what they were looking for, or to someone just checking in to see if there are any new posts.


Visits for the period Feb 24, 2009 to Dec 15, 2010.

I'm now averaging about 150 visits per day, with a low of 100 and a high of 300, for 150 to 1100 total pageviews per day. The peaks are usually the day after posting, when feeds and aggregators pick it up.


Traffic sources. I think "Other" means Twitter.

By far, the most common terms of the 4200 searches that resulted in a visit (other than various forms of the blog name) were related to "Roubo" and "workbench". The direct traffic shows that people have the site bookmarked. The referring sites are those that have linked to me (thank you!), or where I've posted comments or forum entries that allow links. I only got added to the blog roll on the Popular Woodworking Magazine blog in September, and after 3 months it accounts for over 1/6 of all referrals.

If you're looking for interesting woodworking sites, many of these are worth checking out.

Referring Site Visits
unpluggedshop.com 2557
blog.woodworking-magazine.com 2340
sawmillcreek.org 1842
villagecarpenterlinks.blogspot.com 785
galoototron.com 702
ukworkshop.co.uk 507
forums.woodnet.net 470
logancabinetshoppe.weebly.com 421
pedder-altedamenauskiel.blogspot.com 353
lumberjocks.com 347
planeshavings.blogspot.com 305
logancabinetshoppe.com 272
owdman.co.uk 272
theparttimewoodworker.blogspot.com 263
norsewoodsmith.com 222
taylorgarage.com 213
toolemerablog.typepad.com 206
bob-easton.com 176
handtoolwoodworking.wordpress.com 134
woodworkuk.co.uk 94
rpwoodwork.com 90
timberframe-tools.com 69
fullchisel.com 59
blogs.popularwoodworking.com 55
sapfm.org 53
thewoodwayze.blogspot.com 50
insidetheworkshop.blogspot.com 47
frugalwoodworking.com 36
finewoodworking.com 32
theloveofwood.blogspot.com 30
shizutanischool.org 20
larrysworkshop.wordpress.com 15
bowsaw.wordpress.com 12
linkedin.com 12
novicewoodramblings.blogspot.com 9
carlswoodworking.wordpress.com 8
nicolawood.typepad.co.uk 8
rockler.com 7
beernlathing.blogspot.com 6
roughwood.kennethwoodruff.com 6
villagecarpenter.blogspot.com 6
facebook.com 5
dans-woodshop.blogspot.com 4
feedly.com 4
kickstarter.com 4
renaissancewoodworker.com 2
woodlooking.blogspot.com 2
woodnbits.com 2
chesapeakewood.wordpress.com 1
cornishworkshop.blogspot.com 1
evenfallstudios.com 1
onpointradio.org 1
rogersfinewoodworking.com 1
woodworking.mattters.com 1
woodworkingtalk.com 1

From a content perspective, the top pages visited were again anything "Roubo" and "workbench", followed by "Grimsdale sharpening", "Gramercy Bowsaw", and "Intro Hand Tools".

To try to reasonably gauge which countries actually have interested readers, for countries with fewer than 10 visits and 10 pages per visit, I throw out any where the average time on site is less than 30 seconds. This should filter out most of the countries where one or two people randomly stumbled in by accident, though there are a few that just squeak by on the list. All very scientific.

The Map Overlay report lists visits from 107 countries, of which 1 is the "(not set)" country and 28 get thrown out due to the 10/10/30 rule. So I'll call that readers in 78 countries!

I can always tell when a new reader shows up, because the stats for some city show one visit with 10 to 20 pages read.

Country Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on Site (sec)
United States 16421 2.83 270
Canada 1958 2.99 251
United Kingdom 1318 2.99 313
Australia 918 1.75 122
Germany 545 2.95 236
Mexico 342 2.35 132
Italy 278 3.45 254
Sweden 271 2.04 208
Hungary 261 1.74 70
France 214 2.95 178
New Zealand 199 2.93 279
Netherlands 152 3.53 351
Poland 137 3.92 168
Finland 132 3.87 354
Belgium 130 3.25 212
Spain 108 4.05 393
Brazil 98 4.45 445
Norway 86 3.35 451
Croatia 69 5.19 380
Colombia 65 2.94 216
Switzerland 60 6.12 546
Czech Republic 55 2.76 180
Philippines 50 2.94 188
Greece 49 3.12 304
South Korea 45 2.42 138
India 41 1.9 93
Russia 40 2.73 126
Chile 38 4.58 545
Japan 38 2 174
Austria 38 2.08 155
Romania 36 1.78 75
Ireland 34 2.09 273
Israel 33 4.15 460
South Africa 29 3.31 339
Denmark 25 6.52 257
Portugal 25 3.08 130
Malaysia 19 4.32 683
Thailand 19 1.58 27
Estonia 18 2.17 250
Trinidad and Tobago 18 3.33 413
Dominican Republic 16 1.25 17
Turkey 16 2.75 211
Ukraine 15 4.87 377
RĂ©union 13 3.62 528
Jamaica 12 1.42 11
Indonesia 12 1.75 245
Serbia 12 4.58 326
Argentina 12 3.33 254
Slovenia 12 4.42 398
Luxembourg 10 7 845
Bulgaria 9 8.11 643
Tajikistan 9 3.78 670
Latvia 8 5.5 672
Hong Kong 8 2.38 604
Taiwan 8 2 266
Slovakia 7 31 694
Venezuela 7 3.71 483
Singapore 6 1.67 33
Ecuador 6 6.67 559
Guernsey 5 1.6 76
Belarus 4 2 178
Costa Rica 4 1.5 33
Libya 4 2 110
Afghanistan 4 5 737
Iran 4 1.75 40
Qatar 4 4.25 127
Lithuania 4 2.75 423
Barbados 3 5 306
Belize 3 6.33 1770
Iceland 3 7.33 1106
Peru 3 5.67 203
Vietnam 2 1.5 32
Uruguay 2 1.5 80
French Polynesia 2 1.5 89
Macedonia 1 5 123
Mongolia 1 3 176
Bermuda 1 18 4340
Armenia 1 2 40

Regarding advertising via AdSense and affiliate links, let me just say that readers are as rigorous as I am about ignoring ads! I'm getting my little slice of the Internet Millions, but so far this year it hasn't been enough to take my wife out to dinner. Perhaps next year I'll be able to retire off it. Perhaps not.

For those of you who have reached the riveting conclusion here, thanks! And a big thank you to all those who have visited this past year, you make it all worthwhile.

8 comments:

  1. Hey Steve,

    Your "bounce rate" is actually indicative of visitors who only viewed a single page and then went on their way. The full definition is at http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81986

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sweet, maybe I can claim another 20 or so countries! Still have to think about throwouts, since clearly there are cases where one person out of the whole country stumbled on it by accident and wasn't really interested. Or maybe I just won't quibble about such details...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Ben, I've corrected the description of the bounce rate and re-evaluated the list of countries. The 10/10/30 rule still ends up filtering out the same ones by itself, so they were definitely places that didn't have interested readers. But now I know how to interpret the bounces better.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Steve, that is Cool!
    We are definitely listening. I think most of us don't have anything useful to add so we keep our mouths shut.

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