« Virtual Earth Enhances Aerial, Satellite Imagery | Main | Google Blog Search's People Search Spam Problem »
Jan. 10, 2007 at 7:18am Eastern by Danny Sullivan
Search Engine Land: Top Stories & Stats, Jan. 9, 2007
Earlier I did a review of traffic stats for Search Engine Land in December 2006. Today, I'm looking at what happened on the site yesterday, in terms of most popular stories. I can't promise to do this every day. But doing a daily stats review is part of my regular routine, and it helps me keep track of what drove traffic when I do a monthly review as well. So here's yesterday on Search Engine Land, looking at our top stories and what made them pop.
Google Named Fortune's Best Place To Work, But Rich Early Employees Checking Out had about 900 unique page views, our top page. Most of those came off of people searching for google on Google News, about 450 visits from that. Those browsing and finding us on Google News sent another 75 or so visitors. It got on Digg from someone spotting it, but it never got any legs there, sending only 25 people. For us, this story was really Google gold.
Blogs take a lot of flak especially in Digg comments for simply seen as regurgitating the news. I think this is a good example of how you can go beyond regurgitation and add some value. It wasn't one story I was summarizing. I actually combined three related looks at Google employees into one. Google got named the best place to work from Fortune, but the San Francisco Chronicle found some rich ex-Googlers talking about a culture change at the company. For dessert, I tossed in a reference to an AP article on how Google insider sales are fueling California's tax coffers.
Open Letter To Wikipedia Editors: Yes, Matt Cutts Is Notable was second most popular, with about 700 unique views. Here, the audience was completely different. Most of those coming from Google News are probably interested in Google but not search marketers, I'd say. That's fine -- I want that audience. But the Wikipedia article was especially meant to help rally search marketers to turn out and support Matt. Threadwatch is an especially heavy search marketer oriented site, and that was our top referring source, about 110 visitors from there. Another 100 came over from Techmeme. HighRankings Forums sent another 25, as did Mikkel deMib Svensen's blog.
25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines from Jennifer Slegg came in late in the day but still quickly shot up to be our third most popular story, with about 500 unique views. It was yet again a third type of story -- not a news summary, not a rallying rant but instead an informative tips based article. Stumbleupon sent the most, about 100 people. I confess -- I've yet to get my head around how exactly Stumbleupon works, in terms of how readers submit to it and tracking what happens there. I've got it on my to do list to return to. The story also hit Digg but hasn't risen enough (only 16 Diggs right now) to drive any significant traffic. FYI, an entire range of new sources are sending traffic to the article today -- I'll return to it if I do a review tomorrow.
Yahoo Acquires MyBlogLog & More On How It Works was our fourth most popular story, about 350 visitors. This was a mixture of news of the acquisition at the top but mainly a how-to about the service. Everyone was already writing about the story as I could see on Techmeme when I started my day. I knew we had to mention it, but I wanted to do something different. Figuring many of our readers might be unfamiliar with the service, I went the "intro to how you can use" it route. That slight difference was probably enough to help break me out of the pack of stories at Techmeme, which sent us the most visitors to the story, 60 of them. Google Blogscoped sent us another 20 or so.
Google Moon, Google Mars, Now Google Universe? Google Partnership With Space Telescope Project May Make UniTube Possible was the fifth most popular, with about 220 visitors. Most of those came off of people searching for google on Google News, just over 100. That rises to about 125 if you count in those who found us through browsing. Fark sent us another 15, or at least the TotalFark subscription area did. This was another potential case of news regurgitation. But unlike the AP story that triggered our post, we linked to the actual telescope project site, noted the involvement of a former Google engineering VP, pointed at a past interview of him plus gave some background on other Google-related space projects.
Overall, top sources were:
- Direct Navigation: 1,185 visits
- Google Organic/Keyword Driven: 949 visits
- Google Home Page/Reader Referrals: 430 visits
- Bloglines: 180 visits
- Techmeme: 171 visits
It was also our busiest non-Digg related traffic day since we launched, about 8,000 page views and 5,000 visitors. Now I'm off to write some stories!
|
Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz!
Send me the monthly search newsletter too! (Learn more about our newsletters and feeds) |
Subscribe To Our Search Feed!         
|
| Share & Bookmark This Story! |
By Danny Sullivan
Permalink
Jump To Comments
See Related Stories In: About Search Engine Land: Daily Stats
These stats are impressive:
Those visitors coming from Google NEWs add an entirely new dimension to the visitor pool.
People searching on the Organic Search Engines for GOOGLE are a world apart from those searching on Google News for GOOGLE....
These are highly prized vistors for any marketing news blog to have.
Surprising, YAHOO NEWS was not mentioned, (they also provide a quality source)
To further analyze the stats, it should be noted whether these were unique visitors (who never knew about SearchEngineLand) or people who chose to search BEFORE coming here.
If in fact, these were 'uniques', this was potentially even more valuable - especially if they keep returning.
The stumbleUpon visitors,also add an entirely new dimension, they apparently are academic-geek oriented, and are sophisticated and learned - as a whole.