Comments on: Fixing the Ecosystem

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 03:58:39 +0000

Sorry, guys, but traffic is useless in evaluating a blog's ranking. RSS feeds don't count in traffic statistics.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 18:55:37 +0000

[Snark on] Well, maybe that's because my content is more compelling? [snark off]

I do understand what you say, and of course regular readers are going to spend less time, though I try to keep things interesting, pointing to other pieces that update, support, or qualify a particular post. As readership expands, though, newbies tend to take a look around.

Having been demoted at one time from Small Mammal to Slime Mold or something, and now being promoted back to Reptilian status, I'd like to consider my incoming links legitimate. They're certainly the fruit of my effort, not scams.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 17:06:14 +0000

John: A fair point. The odd thing is that, with a handful of exceptions, as a blog gets more "popular," whether measured by links or traffic, the amount of time each individual unique visitor spends at the site declines. When OTB was getting 100 visits a day, they averaged somethng like 2:30 per visit. Now that I'm getting 8-10,000 visits, they only stay a little over 30 seconds. That seems to be true almost across the board.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 16:57:43 +0000

I'm not too wild about the idea of devaluing links to the blog URL. Many of the links to my site are to the site, not just a particular post. I assume that's because, as a niche blogger, my entire site is of interest due to the subject matter. While a single post may draw traffic--and my stats support that--the site also provides a guide to other content that may not have gotten the linkage. Over 25% of visitors to my site spend over 15 minutes at it, going to other articles that were invisible in terms of direct links.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:44:35 +0000

The problem with traffic, though, is that it's inconsistently measured and not necessarily a measure of quality content.

SiteMeter's problems are well documented and not everybody uses it.

While I get a lot of traffic from other bloggers and people who read me regularly, my biggest spikes come from search engines, usually on pop culture stuff. Indeed, probably a million of my 5.5 million visitors came from people looking for videos of beheaded hostages and at least a million more came to see pictures of nude celebrities that I didn't actually have.

By: McGehee

McGehee — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 14:32:40 +0000

I've about come to the conclusion that the real measure should be traffic.

The fact these new ecosystem tweaks have dropped me about 350 places down the rankings has nothing whatsoever to do with this, of course...

By: Arguing with signposts...

Arguing with signposts... — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 13:55:14 +0000

Joyner on the Ecosystem

James Joyner provides more suggestions for the ecosystem. Worth considering.