So, I thought I’d post my referer log to show you who is sending the most hits. FSJ is still 7x more clicky. Too bad Nick Denton!

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Performancing Metrics now uses Clicky stats as its core. It wasn’t built from the ground up, but rather re-branded. I’m not sure what it offers as unique, but regardless, it’s still a nice stats program with the promises of unique features yet to come.

So what makes Performancing Metrics different? Well it’s more about what is happening now then rather aggregating data. It’s great for seeing what’s happening today, but not great for finding out what happened over the past month.

The dashboard shows incoming links, unique visitors, searches and top content. None of it is older than today and it’s a nice overview.

Digging into the analytics a bit you can get visitor information like country, web browser, screen size and OS among others. The actions tab will let you see the visitor’s information including the time and date, what they clicked on, the web browser and OS they used and referring information. It’ll even count downloads, outbound links and FeedBurner subscribers.

Then there is Spy which is really cool. It shows you, in real time, how others are interacting with your site. I had my co-worker go to the site and click on a post title. As she did that, the Spy area in Performancing Metrics told me when she arrived and what she clicked on as it happened. Very cool, yet a huge time waster.

There are two downsides to Performancing Metrics. The first is the daily limit of 1,000 page views on a free account. For $20/year you can have 10,000 daily page views and if you need more, you can spend $50/year for up to 50,000 daily page views.

The second downside is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to finding your top keywords, searches or referring sites for a specific period of time. What’s the top referring domain for June? Well, that’s why I suggest having Google Analytics installed also.

Overall, I really like Performancing Metrics. It’s a great way to see what’s happening on your blog right now. It has some great features and is definitely a step up from the old metrics program. However, you should also have Google Analytics installed as Performancing Metrics does lack some features you or your blog consultant may want.

One thing I’ve complained about in the past as a publisher is having to use so many different tools and services to fully manage, monitor, and monetize your website. Previous to today, if I wanted to look at my Clicky stats and also my Feedburner RSS stats I have to login to two different interfaces. Now since Clicky has used the Feedburner API by supply them my feed and login it pulls my data into the Clicky interface saving me time and headache. I should also note that this is only possible because Feedburner make an API available to do this, so a hat tip to them for being so open.

“WAIT!” you scream, because Feedburner already has normal web analytics integrated into their interface so why do I need to even use Clicky? Well, I like Clicky better, that’s why. If Feedburner didn’t have this API it’s thereotically possible that I would have stopped using them at some point or been less interested in my RSS data. But because I can see my Feedburner stats in Clicky, I’m much more interested in managing and monetizing my feeds to improve their value. It’s a win-win for both Clicky and Feedburner.

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pMetrics is not the same analytics solution that Performancing had before, their new offering is a white-label of Clicky, a somewhat new analytics solution that is my current favorite analytics package for blogs.

So why would you use pMetrics over just using Clicky directly? At this point it looks like pMetrics will be building widgets and putting more community around it:

As pMetrics usage increases, we’ll be unveiling some uber-cool widgets and plugins to enhance your blogging experience. Plans currently include: 1) an AdSense tracking plugin and a 2) a Performancing “top blogs” widget that links back to the top 50 or so blogs using pMetrics. Discussion about pMetrics development and plugin/widget suggestions will be taking place in our pMetrics forum: http://performancing.com/forum/578

The base analytics package is free, but the premium is just $1 a month and adds RSS capabilities and a Spy feature that resembles DiggSpy. I personally love those additions, so I’d highly recommend the premium.

It really seems like a good move for Clicky who gets the marketing and name associated with Performancing to drive more users to their application. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more white-labeling of analytics applications in the future.

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As far as I am currently aware, Clicky, developed by Roxr Software Ltd are not a direct competitor, and thus in my mind them having access to my data is potentially less risk.

Accuracy of Tracking Data

The accuracy of your tracking data is important, thus I am doing a test

Clicky
Performancing Metrics
Mybloglog

Just to give Performancing Metrics a slight advantage, I am going to include their tracking data first in my page.

Clicky does seem to have an edge currently on interface over MyBlogLog, but remember that as I previously wrote, MyBlogLog might well have an API available soon and that historical data is highly valuable if you have been using them for a while.

Also what happens if Clicky gets acquired? I feel more confident in a change over and longevity of the service if it is not being hosted on 3rd party servers.
If Performancing Metrics was just an affiliate white label, and they didn’t have anything to do with my data, I would be much happier to recommend them, but at this stage, Clicky direct gets my vote.

Update

Performancing Metrics and Clicky don’t seem to want to co-exist, thus one of them has to go at least until they improve their scripts so that they truly are different. Maybe there is a problem with shared declaration.

Performancing Metrics

Nothing highly personal, I would just prefer Clicky to have my data rather than Performancing.

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*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

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One tip I have for people on this, is that some web analytics applications make it hard to tell the difference between regular Google Search traffic and Google Blog Search traffic. Google Analytics for example lumps them both together as “google(organic)” in the search keyword statistic. My new favorite easy analytics application of the moment Clicky has a link to each actual seach query so you can see that it’s from Google Blog Search instead.

Why am I seeing more Google Blog Search traffic? I think it’s a combination of reasons. I would bet that Google Blog Search is getting more traffic and queries than the past as blogs grow in the public conscious and people realize Google has such a tool. (Why isn’t it an option on the Google home page?) I also think that this blog has continued to get links and gain relevance which helps it rank higher in Google Blog Search results.

That last point brings up a question though, how do you optimize your blog for Google Blog Search? Is it the same factors that the normal Google search uses? I’d guess that the normal factors still apply, but the Google Operating System blog has done some Google patent research and talks about both positive and negative factors that influence your blog’s ranking.

A couple of interesting positive factors were the number of feed subscribers (how does Google get this from other feed providers? Or is it just Google Reader?), links from webmail and chat (how do they know if someone clicks a Yahoo mail link and lands on my blog?), and using tags to categorize posts. The negative factors seemed aimed at spam, but some tips there would be to make sure you have multiple links in posts, avoid spammy words, and don’t duplicate too much content.

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