28 Sep 08 Web Stats Not Worth Tracking
Inspiration Point: SEO Metrics
I often wonder how much time developers waste on a daily basis tracking non-actionable data. In the past I spent so much time keeping an eye on all kinds of metrics that didn’t have any impact on how I designed or promoted a website. Even today I track various “ego metrics” just for the sole purpose of making myself feel better about the work I’m doing in the trenches. However, I am much more time conscience when looking at this data. In a way it almost makes me feel guilty.
Examles of “Ego Metrics”
- Google Pagerank - In a way I have to say visible pagerank is a good thing. Sure it is the root of a lot of common SEO missconceptions. At the same time how many webmasters are absolutely enfatuated with their pagerank? The collective time lost by people watching this simple 1-10 number has, at some level, decreased the online publishing competition.
- Hourly/Daily Visitors - I do think it is important to keep track of the raw traffic coming to your website but you don’t need to track this at a gradual level. Be honest, if you drove in 1,000 visitors yesterday and 800 visitors today what action could you possibly take? It might be worth investigating if your overall traffic drops to a certain threshold but you don’t need to keep your finger over your traffic pulse.
- Alexa Rank - Let’s put aside the subject of accuracy when it comes to Alexa rank and focus on the more important question. Why does it matter how much traffic you generate in relationship to all the other billions of sites out there? Knowing where you stand could act as an inspiration point to make you work harder but aside from that it’s not really an actionable data point. I find data from Compete.com much more usable as you can more easily compare sites side by side.
- Backlinks - Just to make this clear, I’m not suggesting backlinks aren’t important. They are absolutely vital to your SEO campaign. I also believe this data is quite actionable. My point is, typing in “link:yoursite.com” into a search engine will not help you increase the number of links. So don’t check this on a daily basis. Cut down so you are only checking on a monthly basis and spend that extra time actually building links.
- Adsense Daily Earnings - I used to spend so much time looking over earnings metrics and to be honest I didn’t really use that data to make major impacts. Sure you want to optimize to drive your eCPM up but you don’t need to track this on an hourly basis.
This isn’t an exhaustive list because I really don’t want to dwell on these metrics. They really don’t matter when it comes down to it. Forget about this stuff and spend your time developing content. Make sure the metrics you are spending time on are actionable.
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