Reset password:

Strategic insights
Measuring Real People vs. Normal Analytics

9
PAGES

FREE FOR SUBSCRIBERS

Written by on September 22, 2010

As a publisher, one of the most important things that I need to know is how many people read my articles. That is the single most important metric, and it's vitally important that it's as accurate as possible.

It's the same for you. The number of real people using your site is a key measurement you need to have so you can make the right decisions.

The question is: how do you measure real people?

You might think you can simply use analytic packages like Google Analytics, but these days ad-blockers block it, skewing the numbers. And internal statistics tools that look at the raw data collected by the server is in an even worse shape because of all the bots, crawlers and news aggregators.

I have yet to find a single analytics tool that accurately measures real people.

The only solution? Get your hands dirty and go trough the raw data manually. Identify what is a real person, and what is not.

Find out how many people are actually reading your content, how many people who are blocking Google Analytics (or your ads), and how many bots that request content from your site (where the data is used for aggregators, readers, search engines, etc.)

I do this every 6 months or so, and I use the result to form a new "baseline" for statistics in my publishing system.

Subscribe to read the rest of this 9 page report...

Try it free for one week

Register to try out Baekdal Plus completely for free for one week.

...or subscribe today

$9/month

$99/year

As a PLUS member, you can share anything on baekdal.com, with anyone, everywhere. When you share a plus article with a friend, they can read the full article for free. They will even get notified that you are the one who shared it - with a link to your Twitter profile. Just in case they want to follow you, now that you are being such a nice person!

Share on

Thomas Baekdal

Thomas Baekdal

Founder of Baekdal, author, writer, strategic consultant, and new media advocate.

Follow    

Check out my new book: THE SHIFT - from print to digital and beyond? Free for Baekdal Plus subscribers, $8.79 on Amazon.

There is always more...

Understanding The Importance of the Trend of Convenience »

ONLY FOR
SUBSCRIBERS

20
PAGES

CPA, CPM, CPC ... WTF? »

Measuring Results: Don't be Fooled By Math »

ONLY FOR
SUBSCRIBERS

17
PAGES

Making Sense of Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis »

25
PAGES

Always Take a Step Back Before You Act »

The Old World of Media Licensing »

The Three Levels of Uncertainty and the Boston Bombings »

ONLY FOR
SUBSCRIBERS

17
PAGES

The Even Scarier Graph for Newspapers (and partly brands) »

ONLY FOR
SUBSCRIBERS

17
PAGES

Never Just 'Wrap Up the End!' »

It's Not Relevant News »

How to Get Baekdal Plus for $1 »

When a Rogue Advertising Company Causes a Social Backlash »