How to/not to show growth
Yesterday talking about growth in RSS subscribers had got me on to thinking of all the ways I look at my site’s stats, which ones actually show growth and progress. This mostly focuses on blogs.
RSS Readers
RSS readers are an excellent way to show growth. Nothing shows development over time like an increasing amount of people reading what you write. The aforementioned post shows the development of readers as time goes on. Growth indeed.
Alexa Rank
Alexa ranking shows growth for those ranked very well. At time of writing my Alexa rank is 230k over three months and around 89k for today (which is actually on or two days ago, depending on the cycle). Now, you would think right there, “that is total growth and improvement!” but here’s why it’s not.
With the amount of traffic I get (45-55 visits/day~) my Alexa rank with fluctuate depending how many of those users are Alexa users. I could get 50 visits exactly everyday and still have a fluctuating ranking from around 75k to 500k. Now if Alexa could get off their ass and make a FireFox plugin, it’s a different story for 75% of my users.
That’s another thing about Alexa. The fact that FireFox (among others) doesn’t support it means that only 15% or so of my users could be possible Alexa users.
Traffic/Visits
Traffic can show growth and usually does but traffic can plateau and spike at random times, making it hard to interpret. Having only switched to Mint recently, it’s hard to tell but I know that February was my best month so far, with around 3.5k visits. Usually I’ll get around 1.8k. Why is this? I had a traffic spike in February where I got the same amount of hits in one day that I would normally achieve in a month.
Aforementioned spike soon faded away and I was back to normal for the time. So unless you’re going the pillar route and steadily growing over time, traffic can be iffy. Long term it’s great. Things like “this month last year” and “six month averages” are great for this.
Technorati Rank/Backlinks
Technorati rank shows growth, as do backlinks. Good backlinks and a higher Technorati rank come with time, and well, linking! People don’t link to you for no reason, so you obviously improve for them to do it. I’m not saying someone reads your blog and says, “Not good enough for some link love” but more of a getting noticed kind of thing.
Another thing with links is that they don’t happen over night, and are unlikely to spike. Watch over time at your Technorati rank. I know mine’s been rising nicely for a while now.
Indexed by Google
The amount of pages indexed by Google shows literal growth very well. If by ‘growth’ you mean the size of your website and the amount of pages you have, then head over to Google and hit this term up:
site:www.yoursite.com
The amount of pages can fluctuate depending on the activity of pages changing and moving, but over time this is great. “Oh look, I have 1000 pages more than I did two months ago“. This is also a sign of a well coded template, when your site is indexed very easily.
So there are many ways to track your site, including various traffic stat apps, Alexa, Google, Technorati and what have you, but only some show true growth and development over time. And remember, growth doesn’t happen over night, or quickly at all. It is meant to be gradual.
P.S. Due to the joys of WordPress’ delayed posting, I’ll be throwing some javelin when this goes live. Wish me luck? 
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