Attention all TypePad users!
As you know, I am a huge TypePad fan, but there is one area where the service is weak: site stats.
Currently, the only way to get detailed stats is to use an outside service, such as Feedburner and MyBlogLog (both great tools). Six Apart provides only minimal information: total number of hits since your site began, average per day, total this week, and today's total.
If you start to monitor these numbers, however, you'll start to notice a discrepancy. The total for "today" will often be much larger than your other numbers (typically about 2x more). For example, the stats might show you received 1000 hits today, but your total for the week or since inception has only increased by 500 or less. I have seen this consistently and when I heard from other users having the same question, I decided to ask Six Apart.
Once again, I received a very prompt and helpful reply.
The Today statistic shows all the hits from yesterday, plus whatever has passed of today. Thus, at 12:01 a.m. it shows about 24 hours worth of this while at 11:59 p.m. it shows about 48 hours worth of hits.
Wow! I think it's fair to say that no one would instinctively interpret the stat that way. When I look at the Today stat, I have always assumed that it was the number of hits in the last 24 hours. However, as the response shows, Today can be as much as two days worth of traffic.
I think it would be helpful if Six Apart defined the stats on the knowledge base page to help eliminate the confusion. The simple point is: the weekly, since inception, and daily average stats are the ones to watch.
Wow, thanks for that tip, Brian. I had been wondering...that really clears things up. Congratulations on taking the time to ask. Brilliant idea.
Posted by: Katherine | March 16, 2005 at 10:00 PM
That answers one question. But why do my total page hits go down sometimes? This just happened after a busy couple of days.
Posted by: Dr X | February 23, 2007 at 05:43 AM