Published: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 in articles » management by Thomas Baekdal
Every person who creates content on the internet wants to know 2 things about their visitors; how many are there (traffic) and where do they come from (referrers). And the way this works is currently changing at an incredible rate.
The internet used to be a place that you visited to do or get something, much in the same way as you would ‘visit' your TV to watch a show. The internet was a place, or a thing.
But we are right now seeing an incredible change in how people use the internet. It is no longer a place that you visit. It's now like electricity. Today the internet is a part of us. It is a part of our existence. We no longer go online. We ARE online.
The internet is more than simply good content. It has a become a communication platform, connecting people with content (reading), content with people (commenting), content with content (FriendFeed, RSS etc.), people with people (#followfriday), and most importantly, you with people (Twitter, Facebook), and people with you (@replies, delicious).
This makes up the Social Web. It's the combination of people, content, communication and you. All happening as a constant stream, as opposed to something you visit.
Many people are now seeing this shift in behavior directly in their statistic. Mark Cuban recently wrote that his web statistics had shifted to Social networks, Business Insider recently wrote another article about it, so has a ton of other people. And I see the same on baekdal.com.
In 2005, Google and the other search engines accounted for 65%. Today Google has dropped to 2%***. And I recently tweeted about my top referrers when I wrote:
Top 5 referrers last week (baekdal.com): Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious, Twitter, Google, Facebook - It's a social world :)- Baekdal on Twitter
Note: *** Normal search via Google.com. Search engines variations e.g. image search, language search, and other search engines - still totals 15%
This shift has a dramatic effect on how we look at the Traffic + Referrer. The traditional forms of measurements no longer make any sense. We need to look at it differently.
Measuring how many people that comes to your site is no longer really relevant.
People no longer exclusively read your content on your website, via a browser. They might read it on Facebook, in an RSS feed, on one of the many news aggregators, or via other sites that are republishing your article, either in full, or as quoted segments.
On baekdal.com, more than 30% never read my articles via the website. That is a lot of people. Also measuring traffic, as in absolute unique visitors, has always been a bad idea. A person who visits your site does not necessarily read your content (in fact, many just skim the top part and move on). And even if a person does read it, it doesn't mean that she remembers it.
You need to forget about measuring traffic. It's inaccurate and it's irrelevant. Instead you need to measure ‘influence'. How many people have you really connected to today? How many people chose to make you a part of their stream? How many people decided to come back another time? That is your new ‘how many are there' statistics. Not people but Influence!
It's the same with referrers. Instead of looking at where people are coming from, when they visit your site, you need to look at it in a much broader sense.
You need to look at all the times people are referring to you as person, your company, product, content, website, and your social profiles. And you should not look at where people are coming from, but instead what they are doing. What they are talking about, what they are sharing, and who is subscribing to it.
Tracking referrers is the old way of using the web. The modern way is to monitor and track every time someone mentions, discusses, share, criticize, quotes or saves something that has to with you. You need to tab into not only the content that people post about you, but also the communication that is taken place with it.
But what you really need to do is to look at how people are reacting to your content (or you as a person). The point of this is to discover how people are responding:
In the past this involved a lot of work. But now there is a ton of new services that makes this whole process much easier. With Twitter you can combine a search for your name + a search on Backtweets for any links to your site and social profiles.
This is the new web. It has changed from being a place that you visit, to a place where you are. And it is no longer relevant to measure traffic + referrers. Instead you want to measure influence + communication + reaction.
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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Now we only need to enlighten those who aren't with us yet, among them a whole lot of corporates.
Exaclty, although that is sometimes harder than it sounds :)
Lighting design, visual ergonomics, visual arts and combination of all that!
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Observing how they are developing corporate sites and reading your articles resembles going to watch Star Track in an automobile. It is so fast, exciting ang simple on the screen! Why can't they use it already now?!
We are realy on the verge of something! Get rid of laptops and desktops (as ad media) - go for Twitter-phones, FB-panels and Flickr-frames!
Thanx, Thomas, you do enlight! /Kit
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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He he. I like "reading your articles resembles going to watch Star Track in an automobile". Thanks!
Now we only need to enlighten those who aren't with us yet, among them a whole lot of corporates.
- Martin Söderlund
Exaclty, although that is sometimes harder than it sounds :)
- Thomas Baekdal
Just imagine how hard that becomes in the Central American Market.
Great Article!
borthwick is having a similar experience on visitor sources (check it out here: http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/05/13/699/ )
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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Simone, Thanks! :)
This is a truly interesting article. It would be nice to see referral information from other types of websites or even a massive conglomeration of data from many websites.
May I please ask what methods you used to create the pie charts? My guess is that Adobe Illustrator was used with custom textures on top of the pies for the brushed effect. It is an extremely nice graph.
Thank you
VU
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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VU, Thanks!
The graph was made using Apple Keynote (they are a part of a much bigger trend presentation). The effect is one of the normal themes for graphs in that program :)
I would also like to see referral info from other sites, but as you can see, more and more sites are discovering this shift in user behavior.
Great post! :)
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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Thanks !
To take this a different way, perhaps this change in referral is more limited to the maturing of the net and people finding secondary sources that represent them, a place for them to start not look for.
That may sound the same as your well written article but I feel it represents how passive much of this experience is. Your Twitter piece being perfect evidence.
This makes aggregation tools like RSS an equal partner with sites like /. and twitter (at least how I use it).
To be back on topic a bit more, being cut throat I can only see influence as a way securing and entrenching traffic rather than overstating it as an ends in of its self.
Very so. I really like the influence and reaction comments. Cause it's not about the followers or fans. They are there because it's very easy to just click join or follow. Most of which have no idea why they've joined or are are fans of something. But there is a reason why they got there and it's because someone else did so. So really instead of Google Analytics we need a "Social Pimpster Analytics" which finds the most influential people that can create reaction.
I doubt it, I recon search engines like Google will just incorporate social media into its search algorithms. Google have for some time being experimentaing with user behavior on websites rather than just links from other webmasters, so it will be just a matter of time before search becomes even more complicated and human orientated.
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May 26
2009
Martin Söderlund
Web professional with communications firm Hallvarsson & Halvarsson, focusing on ASP.NET, EPiServer and front-end development. Also a Manchester United fan.
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Excellent article that highlights how the Internet of today works and how people gather information today compared to yesterday. Now we only need to enlighten those who aren't with us yet, among them a whole lot of corporates.