hi nik and others i should weigh in here. i'm actually talking about this at MW08 in a few weeks.
web analytics are a nightmare if you are trying to get any clarity out of absolute figures. matt, nik and others are right - the trends are what matters. however . . . page tagging solutions *don't* count bots and spiders (as they don't execute javascript). log file solutions suffer from bots and spider traffic (as well as counting every single RSS refresh etc) we've found the best option at the Powerhouse is to use a combination of approaches depending on what we are trying to measure, and for whom, for comparative stats we use Hitwise which is a local ISP-level solution. we are able to measure our AUSTRALIAN traffic (not international) against other sites and industries as a percentage of total traffic. it doesn't provide X visits but instead tells me the %age of Australian traffic to the Powerhouse site as a proportion of any particular sector's overall traffic. because it measures at the ISP layer it allows me to compare against other sites and mine search data as well as where visitors go AFTER our site (interestingly a fair amount go to ebay!). Hitwise does this by buying anonymised ISP proxy logs from the major ISPs around Australia. i'd argue that at a meta-level % of total internet traffic is more useful than counting visitors . . . . internet usage fluctuates seasonally but is also always growing . . . . even if your site traffic is growing at say 20% per annum, what if overall internet traffic is growing at 25% per annum? then your site is actually going backwards in terms of 'share' i am looking forward to Google Analytics' upcoming 'comparative benchmarking' stats . . . seb Sebastian Chan Manager, Web Services Powerhouse Museum street - 500 Harris St Ultimo, NSW Australia postal - PO Box K346, Haymarket, NSW 1238 tel - 61 2 9217 0109 fax - 61 2 9217 0689 e - sebc at phm.gov.au w - www.powerhousemuseum.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] on behalf of Nik Honeysett Sent: Wed 12/03/2008 8:27 AM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Website benchmarking Google Analytics is a page tagging service, its accuracy will depend on you and what you want. If you have comprehensively tagged all your pages, then it will comprehensively report on your traffic, but that traffic will include bots and spiders i.e. not real people. You can filter these out - up to a point - but are real-people numbers important to you? Its unlikely that you will ever get an accurate number of real people visiting your site, so its best to accept that. Assuming, you did have an accurate number and that number suddenly doubled or halved what would you do? What would happen? In either case you would want to know why, but you're not really interested in the number, only the change. You can figure that out whether you have real-people numbers or all-inclusive numbers. Your real concern should be trends and Google Analytics is fine for this, as long as you know what you're reporting and you don't change the filtering. -nik >>> "Jeff Tancil" <jtancil at tenement.org> 3/11/2008 12:58 PM >>> That seems to beg a question: what stats service is useful? As a fairly dinky Museum, we use the best free service, GoogleAnalytics. How badly do people think that skews? -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nik Honeysett Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 3:53 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Website benchmarking Like you say, these sites are ok for trends but do not give anything close to accurate figures for traffic your numbers. -nik >>> Russ Brooks <RBrooks at mus-nature.ca> 3/11/2008 10:43 AM >>> When we noticed a shift in our web statistics we wondered if it was just our site or was it something that was affecting all other museums. We found the two following sites very useful in providing us with an opportunity to compare our performance to that of other museums. http://www.alexa.com/ http://www.compete.com/ These two sites allowed us to see the exact same patterns in traffic affecting nearly all other museums. These sites can also be useful when trying to determine Internet usage trends. Is Facebook still hot? Type in their address and you can see the results. On 3/11/08 1:26 PM, "Leonard Steinbach" <lensteinbach at gmail.com> wrote: > I was wondering whether anyone uses any particular web traffic statistics to > compare the performance of their website to the websites of other museums. > In effect is anyone benchmarking their website against others, or know of > any studies or papers which address this issue? > > Thanks > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l =========================Important Notice===================================== This email and attachments are for the use of the intended recipient(s) only and may contain confidential or legally privileged information or material that is copyright of Powerhouse Museum or a third party. 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