Referrals: Real Life Statistics - How to people get onto my blog?

[petercasier]

There are a lot of posts about increasing traffic to your blog, how to get links in, etc...

I ran some statistics to check the value of social bookmarking, forum referrals, blog directories, searches, etc... Thought it might be useful to post some statistics on referrals to my blog, over a period of 18 months, and 180,000 visits down the line... It somewhere shows the potential importance of the different types of referral sites...:

Social bookmarking:
reddit.com 29255
boingboing.net 7883
digg.com 5902
shoutwire.com 4057
popurls.com 1004
bloglines.com 769
stumbleupon.com 596
totalfark.com 269
wired.com 154
technorati.com 147

Forums (mostly travel forums):
expat-blog.com 2552
flyertalk.com 568
thorntree.lonelyplanet.com 372
comebackalive.com 184
reisomdewereld.nl 174

Search engines:
google: 19,915
yahoo: 961

Directories:
blogcatalog.com 187
blogtoplist.com 126

Referrals from others:
on.net.mk 1113
stupidsecurity.com 801
blog.fefe.de 759
aidworkers.net 723
jerrypournelle.com 594
chrisblattman.blogspot.com 377
monitor.hr 246
sharingmeanscaring.blogspot.com 239
quartertothree.com 198
plime.com 145
thetyee.ca 140
en.wikipedia.org 133

While traffic characteristics might vary a lot from blog to blog, depending on the audience, the subject and the blogger's activity on forums, social bookmarking sites etc..., the statistics were quite an eye opener to me:
- the high importance of social bookmarking
- the little importance of blog directories
- Google is by far the most important search engine referral (surprise, surprise )

Note: The figures above are derived from Google Analytics, which logged 111,000 visits, while Sitemeter indicated 180,000 visits.

Peter

[EverythingEverywhere]

I did something similar. Traffic from March 17, 2007 (first day I used Google Analytics) to today (September 26, 2008).

Total Visits: 134,481


Search Engines

Google (Organic): 22,840
Yahoo (Organic): 1,883
MSN (Organic): 362
Live (Organic): 351
Ask (Organic): 48
AltaVista (Organic): 8


Images.Google.com: 1,157
Images.Google.com.uk: 110
Images.Google.com.ca: 79
Images.Google.com.au: 75
Images.Google.com.ph: 62
Images.Google.com.de: 42
Images.Google.com.it: 30
Images.Google.com.pl: 24
Images.Google.com.es: 22
Images.Google.com.nz: 21
.
.
.
images.google.com.uy : 1

Social Media/Directories
StumbleUpon: 17,359
Reddit: 10,374
Entrecard: 4,992
entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com: 3,245
Bloggers Choice Awards: 2,945
BlogCatalog: 1,113
Twitter: 1,024
Digg: 831
Facebook: 666 + about 200 subdomains
Bloglines: 568
AllTop: 402
BlogTopList: 287
Technorati: 284
Flickr: 262
Myspace: 255
Alexa: 162


Forums

BootsNAll: 664
Firestorm: 255
LonelyPlanet: 204
WorldofWarcraft.com: 178
DigitalPoint: 156
Bloggeries: 115

Referring Sites
Direct Traffic: 28,818
PVPOnline: 10,920
Everything-Everywhere.com: 1,963
Gary.Arndt.com: 822
MonteCook.com: 649
UpgradeTravelBetter.com: 603
TravelBlogs.com: 414
atrane.com: 396
wowinsider.com: 348

[EverythingEverywhere]

I think the importance of blog directories isn't traffic, it is the links juice it gives to Google.

[petercasier]

Hi Gary,

yep, that shows more or less the same characteristics as mine, even though your search traffic is higher.

Originally Posted by EverythingEverywhere

I think the importance of blog directories isn't traffic, it is the links juice it gives to Google.

I am not sure. On another thread, people mentioned that links from certain sites actually negatively contribute to your google rank... I asked for more explanation... Would you be able to answer?

Peter

[CodrutTurcanu]

I think these stats are cool, but it doesn't show the quality of the traffic and which converts better.

I use Analytics too and have specific goals:

1. folks who join my list or blog updates letter so I know which traffic gets me leads.

2. folks who buy my mentoring , so I know which traffic is profitable.

Did you test this too?

[Bloggeries]

Originally Posted by petercasier

Hi Gary,

yep, that shows more or less the same characteristics as mine, even though your search traffic is higher.



I am not sure. On another thread, people mentioned that links from certain sites actually negatively contribute to your google rank... I asked for more explanation... Would you be able to answer?

Peter

When you get a 1 way link from any site on the web it's considered a "VOTE OF CONFIDENCE" from the site giving the link. All sites are of different strength , niche and standing in the eyes of the Search Engine. The stronger, older more recognized (more reputable) the stronger the weight in the search engine algorithm.

You don't get listed in dmoz, google dir or yahoo dir for traffic. You do to get a vote from a strong trusted site that exerts editorial integrity. Everyone with a link there is the "cream of the crop" and it's manually edited so it sends a flag to engines YOU ARE NOT SPAM. It only makes sense for engines to give those types of links more weight then say a sitewide on some new blogspot that has 0 incoming links and no reputation.

Hope that kind of makes sense. I don't think engines care how much chatter and hype and incoming links your site has; it's WHO they are coming from.

@Gary - Very cool stats break down.

@Pete - Thanks for starting this; cool thread. I need to get on Reddit!

[petercasier]

I think these stats are cool, but it doesn't show the quality of the traffic and which converts better.

No, I did not do traffic conversion. For me, the goal is that once people discover my site by accident, they will come back and form part of the readers' community. Unfortunately that is difficult to put into Analytics goals.

Peter

[Bloggeries]

Originally Posted by petercasier

No, I did not do traffic conversion. For me, the goal is that once people discover my site by accident, they will come back and form part of the readers' community. Unfortunately that is difficult to put into Analytics goals.

Peter

Speaking of analytic goals I had the chance to become acquainted with Woopra - Website Tracking and Analytics ; used a demo and signed up while at Blog World. The stats it gives you is incredible; supposedly you can even chat with someone as you see them crawling your site.

I'd go check it out for sure.

[steamsesh]

wow guys, impressive traffic.

[petercasier]

Woopra - Website Tracking and Analytics

Will give them a try, Rob!