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5 Helpful Sites to Analyze Your Blog

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Analyzing your blog is an important aspect of blogging as it can help you determine who your target audience is and which kind of content is proving most popular.

There are many sites out there in the vastness of the internet that can assist you with analyzing your blog traffic but in this article I’m going to concentrate on 5 particular ones – these are Alexa, Mouseflow, Quantcast, Technorati and Page Rank.

Alexa

Alexa is one of the most well known and highly regarded website analysis tools. It collects a variety of data by crawling the internet and collating information from the millions of internet users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. It’s an excellent tool for bloggers as it not only ranks your site according to estimated traffic stats but it also provides lots of other data on your blog including demographic, number of sites that link to your blog who have the toolbar installed, average page views per user, bounce rate and time spent on your site. Just bear in mind that its not 100% accurate as not every net user has the toolbar installed. You can improve your ranking by installing the toolbar on your PC and the widget on your blog. A lot of advertisers take this ranking into account when deciding who to advertise with.

Mouseflow

Mouseflow is another highly useful tool that I've only recently discovered thanks to a fellow IFB member. Its very impressive. It offers real time in-depth statistics. It differs from other stat analysis tools as it allows you to play back a recording of each visit seeing every mouse movement, click and key stroke made and with a premium account you can even access a live stream of visits. The negative is that the free account only includes credits equivalent to 100 recordings a month. This amount is very low and for a lot of blogs it wouldn’t even cover 1 day of visitors. You can upgrade for approximately $15 per month to gain access to information on 1000 visitors but even that is a low amount for some bloggers.

Quantcast

Quantcast is a service that collates data and helps you to understand what your audience is. They collect the information in much the same way as Google – via a tracking code that you add to the html of your blog. It can tell you a lot of information on your visitors including the frequency of visits, the amount percentage of local visitors in relation to your global audience and whether the visitor viewed your site from home or from work. The data collected on traffic is very accurate as is its audience insights.

PageRank

Page Rank is a system Google uses to rank the influence and importance of a webpage. The rankings run from 0 to 10 with ) being least important and 10 being most important. The higher your site ranks the earlier you appear in search results. The ranking is determined by the number of sites linking to your blog and the page rank of these sites. Many sites offer a page rank checker but one of the most widely used and reliable ones is PR checker (prchecker.info).

Technorati

Technorati is a brilliant resource for bloggers not only for its analysis tool but also to see what kind of posts and blogs are popular.

Its analysis system is called an authority rating. It measures a sites influence in the blogging world. Its worked out via inbound links, categories and traffic data over a set amount of time. Links on blogrolls don’t count as inbound links on Technorati. The ratings rag from 0-1000 with 0 being no authority and 1000 meaning it has a very high authority. There can be more than one authority value for a blog as there is the overall Technorati value and the authority value of each category your blog is placed in (i.e. fashion, living etc.). Rankings are also given in much the same manner as Alexa with 1 being the highest ranking.

These are just a few of the available analysis tools that I've found useful let me know if you know of any others!

20 Responses

Tali March 10, 2011

Wow great post dear, I liked your original post about Alexa ranking, and this one is very useful too. Going to check them all out.

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- fuyume March 10, 2011
  
  Thanks Tali 🙂
  
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Bella Q March 10, 2011

Faye, this is great! And just when I was making notes on all the sites to help a blogger get to know her traffic. But I don’t like writing posts like that, I just noticed we needed a post to share. So we’ve got this one. Excellent post. Easy to understand, and a great list of sites. I’d also add Add clicky to the list. I use it on my site. -Bella Q

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Rhoda March 10, 2011

I will be analysizing my blog soon. Thank you soo much for this vital information

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Carolann March 10, 2011

This was a really helpful post. I am always looking for new tools and this outlined each tool in a short and easily understood fashion.

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fuyume March 10, 2011

aww glad you all found my post useful 🙂

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zillz March 10, 2011

Also be sure to use Google Analytics and Google / Bing / Yahoo’s Webmaster Tools.

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WendyB March 10, 2011

Technorati has been very glitchy in my experience. Maybe they’ve improved it — I know they were trying to — but previously it wasn’t updating for months. And it wasn’t just me, every time I looked for help there were a lot of complaints.

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Sandy March 10, 2011

Thanks for this post! Mouseflow sounds very interesting but the 100 recordings per month is limiting. I might try Alexa soon. <3

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toko online korea March 11, 2011

i will try to analyze my web right now . thank you for ur great article 😉

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Sandra at Debutante March 11, 2011

I agree with WendyB. I had a great ranking on Technorati and one day my entire blog vanished on their system. I had no rank at all. Haven’t used it since.

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Leanne March 12, 2011

Wow. One of my big falldowns with my blog maintenance is my lack of analyzing. When I get back from my next trip, I’m most certainly checking these out and taking action!

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Simone March 13, 2011

Great post! I’ve been using Google Analytics and I am mostly happy with it, but I will definitely take a look at these tools as well!

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Simon March 14, 2011

Fuyume great post. I especially found it interesting when you talked about technorati measuring a sites influence in the blogging world and works out inbound links and trafiic data over a set amount of time.

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Linda March 18, 2011

I would not recommend using Alexa to get your own stats since everything they publish are estimates based on their limited sample. It is very useful for seeing how you stack up against other sites, but if you are just using it to get your own statistics like bounce rate, etc., Google Analytics or another tracking system that uses a code on your site to track every visit is much more accurate.

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fuyume March 18, 2011

I agree Linda but I did say estimated.

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Courtney | Those Graces March 24, 2011

Love this Faye! I think using a multitude of sites outside of just Google Analytics and the ilk is extremely beneficial to start to understand the “depth” of a blog.

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Vonnie March 25, 2011

awesome information and easy to read..thanks!

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Anthony Limpert September 19, 2017

PageRank has been discontinued a long time but I see this article went up in 2011. Amazing content and awesome that it still shows up high in the search results. Also, the link to the page rank checker wasn’t working for me.

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- Laura Kell September 22, 2017
  
  Hi Anthony,
  
  Thanks for letting us know – we are working to update all of our content for years past, so this article will be updated soon!
  
  Thanks for your patience,
  
  Laura (IFB Editorial Assistant and Community Manager)
  
  Reply