On the Internet, there is one thing that is as reliable as the gold in Fort Knox: a website's analytics. How many times have you read a great blog post with amazing infographics or just a post that was very well written and wondered how much traffic that site has received from it? At SEOmoz we strive to be transparent about everything we do, but even our traffic data is something that we don't often share.
Today we're introducing Open Analytics, a new feature on our blog and YOUmoz sections that allows you to see traffic data for individual blog posts. To view the analytics data, just click the "Post Analytics" button at the bottom of any blog post.
Traffic stats from Facebook + Twitter's Influence on Google's Search Rankings
For each blog post you will get six different stats from the time the post was published to the date you request the stats:
- Number of visits the post has received
- Number of pageviews for the post
- Average amount of time our visitors spend on each page
- The next three stats are traffic source data: direct traffic, search traffic, and referral traffic
Why We Did It
Transparency
SEOmoz has a strong set of core values that are outlined in our TAGFEE Tenets. (You can read more about them in a post by Rand titled What We Believe and Why: SEOmoz's TAGFEE Tenets.) Since TRANSPARENCY is the first tenet, we wanted to share with you which blog posts are successful and which didn't do so well.
Education
The SEOmoz community is here to learn, and by seeing the traffic stats for each post, we can learn a great deal about the post's topic and content. Do the most successful posts contain more data, graphics, or both (infographics)? Which topics go the most viral (Referral Traffic)? Approximately how many times does one visitor revisit a post, on average (Pageviews divided by Visits)?
Belief in Inbound Marketing
We strongly believe in the power of Inbound Marketing and want to invest in those channels! We want to walk the walk by allowing you to see the traffic stats of a business that not only believes in Inbound Marketing but is actively doing it.
Expose Content That Works
Does having a video in your blog post increase the amount of visits and time on page compared with a post that only has text? You now have access to our analytics data to help you decided what works and what doesn't. Back when I originally wrote my post What Makes a Link Worthy Post - Part 1 and Part 2, I didn't have access to this data. Imagine what you can do with the data now.
Expose Bloggers To Data They Want
Many of our YOUmoz writers want to know how their posts did other than looking at the number of thumbs or comments they have gotten from our users. Now, after your post is published, you can see the true amount of traffic that your post was exposed to. Plus, let's be honest: it's fun to brag to your friends about how your post did better than theirs.
How We Did It
We use the Google Analytics API to pull post data into our CMS, cakePHP. For those of you who have used the Google Analytics API before, you know that it can be slow to return information and the information can have a delay to it. To reduce the amount of time our community members had to wait to see our data, we converted the data from Google Analytics API into a JSON string. This JSON string is stored on our server and refreshed at a interval based on the age of the post. Newer posts get fresh updates every hour and older posts get fresh data every four hours.
For those who are interested in more information on how we executed Open Analytics, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I can go more into depth on a future blog post.
Future Expansion
Since this is the first release, we want to hear from you on what you would like to see. Ideas that we have floated around included showing keywords that are driving traffic to the post, top referrers that send traffic, and showing historical traffic charts. Before we move forward we want to hear from you on what you would like to see. Don't be shy - we want to share information with you.
Wow, this is fantastic news. I'm blown away by your openness and hope to see more publishers and communities follow suit. I think you're right - this really is a great source of information and a tool for your users/readers to use in their education and decision-making. Well done!
Blown away myself! Its almost a given that this stats will be used by - you know who - and get some great competitive stats that was almost impossible to get before, but when you publish great stuff, that probably is the last of your worries. Enjoying every bit of this 'openness'.
According to my opinion SEOmoz team is very active and smart to create romance on each web page.
Why maximum SEO guys love SEOmoz and eager to read + visit this website on daily basis?
Answer is very simple, SEOmoz team always ready to give some attractive one to readers and users of SEO software.
Who will love to visit same and old web site on daily basis? I don't like to visit that kind of web site which never gives me some new things on frequently visit.
SEOmoz team can understand this competition and honest to give all data which they have.
I really appreciate this stuff to be honest regarding data and motivate all people who are leverage to make site up to date.
Thumbs up for the phrase "create romance on each web page" :)
I like it. I would give it a few weeks and that will be available on Wordpress as a plugin:) I would definitely like to have it on my blog as well.
Agree, maybe we can get Mozzers to prepare one for us? :D
I think you just boosted the average time on page by a minute or so for all of your posts going forward...
Thanks for being so transparent, it's pretty inspirational.
I agree. I think we'll see some increases in the "time on page" for sure.
Great TAGFEE improvement!
And I cannot deny that the first thing I did was to check the analytics of my posts here in SEOmoz.
About future features... being SEOmoz a blog visited from all over the world, personally I'd like to see also from which countries the visits came. Maybe not all the detailed, but an excerpt with the top 3 visiting countries would be interesting.
Great feature idea! I'll add it to our list of things to role out in our next release!
Wow - I saw this and assumed it was admin-only. Very cool that we're revealing this data to our readers. Of course, now everyone will know when my posts get 4 unique visitors :p
5 visits Dr. Pete. 5.
Whoo-hoo! Thanks, Mom!
C'mon, all those visitors tracking must be me! I read your stuff all the time :)
just tested the Analytics button again.... voila it worked!
beautiful beautiful beautiful data :P
Very interesting and great post! I only have on thing to say!
MOAR DATA MAKES US ALL BETTAR
This is a really cool feature, I like the openness. Any plans on making this little widget available for other blogs and websites?
I saw this yesterday very cool too see how long people spend reading posts and commenting.
But also interesting too see how much traffic specific posts get from various sources.
Will SEOmoz ever be making a analytics package similar to Omniture ;) I wish they do =)
Innovative idea! This post gives a new direction to display content popularity of site or blog, many people use this idea for their blogs or websites. Thanks!
DATA DATA NOM NOM NOM....
Awesome transparency, guys. Some would consider it a risky move but I think it is a long-term winning strategy for everyone. I would definitely be interested in top keywords and referer links, especially to help answer questions like how much does social media contribute to success or lack of success for various posts.
great link bait idea, you should get lots of links from people who like to show the success of their posts on SEOmoz :)
also helpful to see which topics the community is interested in so I guess it's a win win for everyone!
a blog post about how open you are using Google Analytics API but you dont tell us how you did it?
Where are the tutorials? it's a neat feature that other blogs would be happy to have.
A Very Cool Feature! I'm with everyone else now having to write a few YOUmoz posts so we can play the stats.
Definitely a very cool idea to get the moz community more motivated!
~Dubs
You guys [SEOmoz], I trust but I'm not sure how I'd feel about this on a site I'd never visited before. I've certainly seen sites that purport to have had millions of visitors when they look like no-one's been on them. So how do you make this work in such a way that the visitor knows it's legit? Facebook likes & retweets are reasonably trustworthy as they're running code from FB & Twitter - can you implement this for other sites in a way that makes it reliable (damn, I'm giving you linkbait ideas without knowing I'm doing it).
I like it.
Keywords and top referrers would definitely be at the top of my wishlist for additions. :) What a bold move, and a really helpful one too. I wonder how many other sites will consider adding stats on their sites?
Now I have to write some YOUmoz posts myself - so I can look at my own stats.
Definitely a motivating feature :)
Neat. I like the idea of expanding the Analytics to eventually show the keywords that drive the organic hits to the post. Now that's something!
This just seems like a much more detailed pissing contest. Can someone give me a concrete example of how this manner of aggregate data is useful and applicable?
So, is there an API for this coming up so I can integrate this in some of our websites as well?
WDPX - we just use the Google Analytics API (which anyone can use if they have Google Analytics).
Great stuff! I think that open analytics should become a standard practice for all web sites and blogs. Perhaps it will be. But I do think that you are truly "raising the bar" as you say.
Isn't CakePHP a framework rather than a CMS? Or is there some secret cms frosting you can pour over it? If that's the case, reveal! reveal!
If you're white hat go all the way, well done.
What is really cool is your share / visit ratio. Just looking at this post, its likely almost 25% of the visitors end up interacting with the post in some way.
I know mozzers are probably predisposed to sharing, but that is thoroughly impressive.
This is an absolutely brilliant idea. WorldBlu (worldblu.com)has been working to spread democracy in the workplace for some time now and a part of that is democrativ education. I love seeing SEOMoz using similar priniples in the way they interact with their community. Keep up the amazing work!
Fantastic, it will be interesting to see how others leverage this information. Thanks.
Tell me please, how you have implemented alteration of data in the JSON string?
For those who are interested in more information on how we executed Open Analytics, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I can go more into depth on a future blog post.
Yes, Please do write a blog post about the methods you have used to pull that info from Google Analytics and how an webmaster with some basic programming skills might be able to do the same.
I'd love to be able to do this for my website.
I have long wanted to be able to share some of the more interesting stats for pages on my website. Besides, the basics such as time on page, bounce rate, etc, For example, how many times was this article printed? The data is being collected using event tracking, I look at the data sometimes but it sure would be more useful if I could display it publicly.
Thanks
The traffic sources data means visits? If I add all the traffic data numbers I do not get the number of visits.
Your math is kind of correct though the traffic sources doesn't account for all the traffic coming to the page. If you use Google Analtyics you know that there can be a "Other" category which can account for a percentage of traffice coming to the page. So direct + search + referral does not equal the number of visits to the page. Plus if a user navigates to the page from an internal page it doesn't count towards the traffic source.
Got it. Thanks. Other is associated with all the tagged links campaigns you have. Usually this is a small amount of traffic. That's why I got confused.
This is awesome guys, really brings new meaning to being 'open and transparent'.
This is an awesome move, looking forward to more sites sharing this information. We just need someone to bang a plugin together, so that we can all get it running quickly ;)
This is incredible news and a flawless business strategy as it solidifies the feeling of community and comrodory. Personally, I will continue to pay my $99.00 per month just so I can razz others on their under performing posts! Thank you SEOMOZ I will now be spending even more time on your site! :) Also, PLEASE allow future updates to be the introduction of MOZ RAZZIE Awards! It would make my life complete!
guys and girls that's awesome, also a little soul crushing on the youmoz posts if it wasn't that popular :)
This is pretty cool I like it!
I remember you were going to do something similar with YOUmoz last year around this time.
great idea :) we already can see how some types of post fared when looking at the comments and social sharing, but this gives us more insights...
Awesome feature guys. It'd be interesting if you added data for incoming links as well - would be able to show ratios of visits/incominglinks and all sorts of other fun things ;)
OK, last night (My Time) I was reading the post on Youmoz and blog started to act a bit wired for a moment, I tried refreshing it and I saw this tab...lucky me I think I was at the same time…:)
I think this is great to see this tab on SEOmoz, The team has proved themselves the best ever team in the search and digital marketing. This will not only attract the new search related people to become loyal Mozzers but this data will help us while writing research post where we need to compare traffic and other status.
Thanks you SEOmoz for this awesome feature… and I am sure this is going to get much more link baits ;)
Love it.
Anyone else getting this message "Yikes, looks like something went wrong. Please try again later."
When you click to see the analytics for this post?
That error appears when Google responses with no data and most likely you got it because the post was so new that Google Analytics didn't have an traffic data yet. Let me know if you continue to see that problem.
It would probably make sense to have a more specific error message in that case, or to only enable the button once the post reaches a certain age. Happy coding! :)
Chapeau - I raise my hat!If I click on the button I get the message: "Yikes, looks like something went wrong. Please try again later." - I will do that ...
All ambitious YOUmozzers will love you!
Hi there, please see my comment above, it should display information for you now since the post now has data in Google Analytics. GA has a lag to it that delays the inforamtion and sometimes causes an error. Let me know if you have any future problems.
Hi Casay, it's working fine now - thank you!
I must say, Hats off to all folks at mozplex. It really takes a lot of gut to expose analytics to general public.
I just wish to take a bow to the awesome folks at mozplex.
I would be very interested in seeing how much participation (traffic stats) is happening on the public Q and A section. That would give a very good idea on how popular a particular question has been. When you make a question featured, people sometime tend to question the validity of the decision. Analytics there would put a full stop on such thoughts altogether.
PS: By the way, clicking the button for analytics returned an error.
hey there! I just clicked it and all responded well but I am betting my results were cached. We prob have a few tweaks to push through, but they might have to wait till morning. Its almost 2 am on the East Coast where Casey hit publish...betting he passed out after it :) We will def look into it asap!glad you are all digging the concept, we are excited to see how we can roll this out across other parts of the site, and expand the returned data sets as well :) #woot
I am sure its a latency issue. So many people clicking through from social media and search and other referring sources, its quite possible that there maybe a momentary outage. I just recehcked and it worked fine. Awesome job!
Fantastic! This gives great insight to anyone looking to learn about SEO!
Wow, another great source of information. Thanks SEOmoz.
Oh, and I would love to read more about Open Analytics, so please do share more information with us. Thanks.
Great idea guys! I look forward to visiting your ever improving website everyday!
This is simply a great idea allowing users to see what has often been regarded as "heavily guarded information" and allowing the community to learn from the various stats on hand.
Do you believe this will catch on with other community and large reader based blogs?
just AWSEOME guys! I love it and wish I had thought of it first !!! LOL
This is awesome! Thank you so much.
This is extremely innovative. Well done.
Very cool - also very good link bait for you guys - kudos, great idea!
Regarding those "free" sources in the infographics, if done right and smart, they can be very powerful, even for 3 backlinks from each medium.
Very awesome. I'm sure this will evolve as mozers give their input and ideas for what they want to see in the future, like backlinks and keywords, etc. Very cool!
This is an amazing feature. I was shocked by how many more visits one of my YouMoz posts got compared to the others.
Useful data, well presented, and well deserved, and frankly just plain SWEET!!!
this is really awesome. I hope this catches on to other sites as well. I would love to see the stats for lots of different sites.