Should We Measure Traffic In Minutes?
Let's assume that the ratio of referral traffic to social media traffic (by way of social bookmarking and socially driven sites) is 1:10. The question is quite simple actually, but the answer isn't. Would you rather have 5000 unique visitors from Digg.com or would you rather have 500 visitors from everywhere else on the web?
Visitors from Digg.com spend about 3.6 seconds on average while viewing a site whereas referral traffic spends about 38.7 seconds on average on any visited site. Going back to our original question then, 5000 uniques from Digg would translate to 300 minutes spent on your site and 500 uniques from let's say Techmeme would translate into 322.5 minutes spent on your site.
But what happens if the ratio is 1:15? Surely the total time spent by Digg traffic will be more than that from referral traffic, but the average time spent by an individual still remains the same. How much of your content can a reader consume in 3.6 seconds?
As exemplified above, raw traffic numbers can be quite misleading. Assuming our initial assumption is correct, that the ratio is indeed 1:10 then the raw numbers would lead you to assume that 5000 unique visitors are better than 500 unique visitors. Using 'time spent viewing the content' as a metric leads us to a different conclusion.
Not all traffic is the same, and the kind of traffic that specifically suits your needs depends on your own goals. If you are an advertiser that wants to blindly monetize page impressions, then yes, Digg traffic is the way to go. But if you are a content producer wanting to further intellectual discourse, then Digg is probably not the kind of traffic you are looking for.
Perhaps we should use time spent by average visitor and total time spent reading a post as a metric to measure site rank, exposure, and popularity rather than just the number of hits you get.
What do you think?
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Reader Comments (39)
- franticindustries, January 31, 2007
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There are literally hundreds of factors that go into the evaluation of a site's true exposure and value. Experienced webmasters intuitively recognize these and can probably tell a great from a mediocre site just by looking at traffic details. However, it's sad that many commercial services today still take Alexa ranking + page visits as the two most important factors for determining the value of a website.
- Rick, January 31, 2007
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I completely agree.
- Michael, January 31, 2007
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I agree with franticindustries: There are literally hundreds of factors that go into the evaulation of a site's true exposure and value. I used to measure my site's... ahem... value? with views in the beginning, with page views with visitors, with returning visitors with everything available, but in the end, at least that's my opinion right now, the only interesting thing is some kind of conversion rate which you cannot measure: You will never know, what kind of "influence" you have until you cannot check the whole web. It would be interesting to see which ideas you presented got action somewhere else. You cannot find out who told whom about this very website and this third person published something on its website that actually came originally from you.
Perhaps the Google-rank is a good measurement? I don't know...
- Steven hodson, January 31, 2007
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I would much rather have the traffic that spends more time reading that just driveby surfing.
- Brian Provost, January 31, 2007
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This is anti-speedreader.
- CPA Affiliates, January 31, 2007
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I think it really depends on what your goal is... If you are doing more of an arbi site that you are hoping they click out on an ad you dont care how long they stay but if you are looking for return customers or long term readers you would rather the long term visitors than just the instant boost. It all depends on yoru sites goals as to which you would prefer.
- Muhammad Saleem, January 31, 2007
- Gareth, January 31, 2007
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I know I would rather have the traffic that actually reads, absorbs and comments on the topic at hand. A 3.6 second speed read means nothing.
- Quadszilla, January 31, 2007
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How about in $$$
that's what really counts - isn't it?
- Kian Ann, January 31, 2007
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I think it depends on what you want out of your website or blog. If you are starting the blog to make money, then by all means, the cash flowing in is the best measurement. If the purpose of the blog is to share your thoughts, then time spent could be a good measure (unless you can measure how many words your readers actually read!)
- Auke, February 1, 2007
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To be honest, I'd be happy if our blog gets more than 500+ visitors a day!
Seriously though, I tink you'd better have 500 regular users than 5000 Digg visitors. Mainly because the regular users will mostly give some proper feedback and keeps the blogging fun. I don't get all excited by much visitors, I'd rather have some more interaction :D
- Dawud Miracle, February 1, 2007
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I, too, think it depends on your goals. What are you trying to accomplish through your blog? I work with small businesses and independent service professionals and I can tell you they have no need to have traffic data so precise. Neither do the the great majority of bloggers for that matter. Having stats by the hour - or even in 15 minute intervals - is more than enough.
Personally, I'd rather spend my time finding ways to grow my readership, encourage commenting and gain feed subscriptions than get so precise about my traffic patterns.
- NoBody, February 1, 2007
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I'll take 5.000 visitors from anywhere.
Please.
- raulsos, February 1, 2007
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sorry i couldnt read that in 3.6 sorry gotta go ;)
- none, February 1, 2007
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time spent here, 15 secs of so
- seo, February 1, 2007
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shhhhhhh dont tell everyone.
- anony, February 1, 2007
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digg traffic often gets you secondary links which in turn brings referral traffic.This way it also increases link popularity and google page rank.With better PR you get more traffic from google.It also depends on the site as a whole.So if several posts of a site is interesting then there will be repeat visitors from digg traffic.Then slowly the traffic goes exponential.Lastly content rules.
- Jens Meiert, February 1, 2007
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More time spent on a site might also mean severe usability problems. Time does not mean sufficient metrics, it does not provide enough integrity.
Define your "key performance indicators", and measure them.
- Mike B, February 1, 2007
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You used the average from a sample size that 10 time larger thann the other.
- Austin, February 1, 2007
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It depends on what kind of content you are producing and what for. If you're a business site, 5000 pairs of eyeballs, even for moments, means solid impressions. That's one reason billboards work. You don't stare at them long, but it puts a logo or business name in the back of your mind.
Now, OTOH, if you're a blog trying to develop readership, you're less after impressions and more after someone that will linger at your site for a while. As someone mentioned earlier, Digg traffic isn't all bad if it develops links that move you higher on organic searches.
- none, February 1, 2007
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Digg traffic will not make you any money, because half the users are running firefox with adblock and don't even see the google ads.
The other half have been using computers long enough to "tune the ads out" and don't see them either.
Digg made 3 million in adsense revenue, with 20 million unique visitors per month. If a site with inexperienced noobs like cuteoverload.com had that kind of traffic, they'd be making 50 million bucks a year.
The secret to google adsense profits is to generate traffic of DUMB PEOPLE who will click on anything because they can't distinguish an ad from a regular navigation link on your site. Period.
- John Doe, February 1, 2007
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Diggers are idiots.
- Dan, February 1, 2007
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I think questioning the current methods of traffic analysis is great. However, traffic refers to throughput rather than time. Some digger's such as myself, spend much longer on sites I navigate to. Also, analyzing the distribution of time spent per viewer (from digg) would give you more information than a simple average. Perhaps 10% of the digg community spends more than 30 seconds on sites... which in my opinion is very similar to the opposing situation of getting 500 views from other sites.
- theonlydrayk, February 1, 2007
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Should We Measure Traffic In Minutes? No
There are too many factor to mesure value of a website in minutes or traffic.
I vote for a 'seomoz pagestrengh'-like method with many more factors http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php
- WebDude, February 1, 2007
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As has been said, there are a lot of factors that contribute to the "value" of a given site. Is it informational? Is it community-based? What sort of community is it? Does the site provide a value or service of its own to its users?
You can monetize your statistics fairly easily by running a Google AdSense campaign, or by hooking up with some other advertising firm, but all that does is measure a portion of your ability to convert on your current audience. A better measure of the value of your site is how much traffic you can push through to non-advertising links. Digg has value because it very effeciently converts its traffic to traffic for other sites. Doesn't matter if that pushed traffic does any good for the end point, what matters is that it has the ability to take hold of its audience and move it around. In theory, Digg has the ability to harness a great number of people at any given time.
Imagine if Digg, having built its audience, posted a "story" asking for people to take a survey for some other company the Digg dudes find interesting. You taking that survey could have some sort of monetary reward for Digg, or it could provide a great deal of value to that other company.
Sites like DeviantArt, which rank very high on Alexa and have tons of visitors daily actually have a fairly low value because they can't convert their statistics into directable traffic. The nature of DA is that everyone goes to their little corner and ignores everything else. There's no unified DA audience, no common purpose besides posting artwork on the web. Same for sites like Flickr.
The value of a website is its ability to convert on its numbers.
- Jeremy Steele, February 1, 2007
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I guess you could look at it in a good way, it means there is less incentive for people who run "adsense pages" to game the system.
- dr.sanchez, February 1, 2007
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Have both? Agreed! ok who's gonna tell the code monkeys @ digg to get there digits out, in both respects? ;p
- Andrew Faulkner, February 1, 2007
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I personally like to count/estimate the number of readers for my site. I think that Digg and the rest of the social media world provide more traffic than 9rules for example but 9rules often brings in more readers.
I think this is the best perspective to see if you're site 'traffic' is improving or not.
- Nick, February 1, 2007
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How did you calculate time spend on site? Almost every web stats package subtracts 2 time stamps, 1 from landing on the page and the 2nd from the next page request. If there is no next page request, ie, visitor only saw 1 page, you get 0 time on site. Also if your site is making revenue on a CPM basis from advertising, 5000 visits is better than 500 regardless of how much they interacted with the content.
This is more complicated than just digg traffic isn't as qualified.
- Jason, February 1, 2007
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Excellent point. There is virtually no limit to how far you can analyze this data. I recommend signing up for this beta program, so you can get a visual look at your data: Rank Trend
- Les, February 1, 2007
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I view digg as sound thing similar to shooting a shotgun and hoping that some will hit. Depending on the content and how it well it connects with the receiver relates to the success (as you measured in time).
My belief is that paid Adwords traffic would be just as fickle as digg traffic. As in once you stop advertising, the traffic dries up pretty quick.
My idea on how to truly quantify traffic in to a dollar amount (where you measure in time) is based on competitions which means an amount goes back to the visitors to encourage return visitors and some goes to charity to improve reputation. Read more about it at cash-comps.com.
- ilker, February 1, 2007
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I completely agree.. Readership is preferred to traffic for intellectual blogs!
- Shareware Software, February 1, 2007
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u need trageted traffic if u want to make any real cash with advertisments
That is why it cost more to advertise on a site with specific traffic like a real estate web site as oppesed to yahoo that anyone may use
- buythatlocally.com, February 1, 2007
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I think this is an interesting subject. I have found as a web developer that you want to be smart and show different type of ads to different types of visitors. The smart thing to do is show ads by referrer and aim for a mix of traffic.
- Scott, February 2, 2007
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Each site should judge traffic by the 'value' of the visit.
1.) Some sites use CPM advertising are only looking for the high traffic numbers - no matter how long the person stays on their site.
2.) Some sites sell products and 5 'buying' visitors is worth far more than 500 'looking' vistors no matter how long they stay on the site.
3.) Some sites use email collection and generate income based on the long-term value of the subscriber. So a visitor only has to stay long enough to sign up.
I do completely agree that traffic numbers alone are not enough to provide a true "value" of that visitor to the site. It's up to the strategy of the site owner.
Scott Britner $10,000 Dad on a $250,000 Mission www.PassionatePurpose.org
- Bubba, February 2, 2007
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And where are you getting this data for Time Spend of Site?
- Urban Trekker, February 2, 2007
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I agree with you on. Stickiness is more important than the number of visitors to your site.
- Zach Katkin, February 2, 2007
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I agree, if the average visitor from digg is only spending 3.6 seconds I don't think they are spending enough time on your site to digest anything meaningful or lasting. But, the if the average is 3.6 maybe 25% of visitors are spending entire minutes on your site while 75% are spending less then a second? When it comes to digg, and other social networking/news sites the sheer number is what makes it so attractive. Even if only 5% of visitors are staying long enough to digest your content and become repeat visitors, customers, or contact you it is still a LOT of people.
- Nick, February 3, 2007
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I think traffic should be measured in actions. It doesn't matter if digg can send to your site one gazillion visitors if none of them click on an ad or join the mailing list or buy something.
Digg is well known on how low convertions it sends to a web site. This is mostly because of the time diggers spend on those sites, and because most of them are very tech educated (so they don't click on ads or like to join mailing lists)
