Stat Addiction
With the recent improvements to AdSense I find myself checking the stats more and more often, which does take away from my time working on my sites. I also love to check my traffic stats to see if there are any major fluctuations occurring. I am trying my best to only check 3-5 times a day, but today I think I have already surpassed that number.
I think it is based on the fact that as a human we like to see improvements and know that we are doing something right, but also fear seeing ourselves doing something wrong so we constantly check to see which one we are doing. Of course over the short period nothing much changes, but over long periods we can start to notice some trends. However, this still does not prevent me from checking, checking, checking.
Anybody else have this problem?
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POSTED IN: Personal Thoughts
12 opinions for Stat Addiction
Bryan
Apr 6, 2005 at 11:00 am
still having database issues huh. It seems like everytime I check this page, I get those php errors
Scrivs
Apr 6, 2005 at 11:04 am
It’s an MT issue that I am working with 6A to work with. The problem occurs when the page rebuilds initially and doesn’t assign the entry a category so it gets built into an empty folder that doesn’t exist.
Now about answering the question…
Peter Flaschner
Apr 6, 2005 at 12:28 pm
A bit off topic perhaps, but what drug - er - sats package do you use? I’m becoming pretty addicted myself, and think I need to step up to some heavier stuff.
Ben
Apr 6, 2005 at 12:32 pm
Well, since it’s real-time, in theory you could make site tweaks & see right away if your CTR goes up. But CTR is going to fluctuate based on traffic, keywords, etc. So just because your CTR seems to go up or down an hour after you tweaked the site, doesn’t mean that your tweak was what caused the change.
In order to successfully test tweaks vs CTR you either need 1) lots of data and/or 2) very stable testing conditions. If it’s #1, then you should really wait 4-16 hours anyhow. If you want to do #2, you can start with a page that’s been around for a while, where the CTR has been pretty constant historically. Make your change to that page and look at before & after CTR for only that page. If the new CTR is way outside the historical bounds, then your tweak was probably good. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to wait & see if it pans out.
One way to sure your addicition is to remind yourself that nothing much is going to change after an hour. Force yourself to think about other things that you could do that would help you more. Lastly, your addiction will go away after a few weeks. I know marketing people who initially would look at traffic reports every hour to see how many sessions they have that day. After a while, the thrill wore off, & they were back to a regular & productive schedule. ;)
Scrivs
Apr 6, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I am getting better at controlling the addiction since I know nothing major will change every hour (unless one of the sites goes down), but I also realize that the more time I waste checking the more time I am taking away from adding content and tweaking the sites.
Besides checking too much just messes with your emotions.
Andrwe
Apr 6, 2005 at 8:31 pm
It’s a good thing that you didn’t decided to go into the stock market.
Kyle
Apr 6, 2005 at 9:54 pm
It’s impossible to stop man.. you just gotta go cold turkey :)
Actually, checking stats once a day does help a lot I think. I usually check the past 100 referrers (via bbclone) to see where my traffic is really coming from, what keywords are hot lately, etc. If you use this information to your advantage, a lot of times you can find out what people are interested - what people are linking to - and try and improve on that area - increasing overall visits.
Darren Rowse
Apr 6, 2005 at 10:09 pm
only 3-5 times per day? Pah - amateurs! hehe
francey
Apr 7, 2005 at 10:58 am
Dammit scrivs! You just made me go check my stats with this article.
Scrivs
Apr 7, 2005 at 11:03 am
Yeah, I seem to have that effect on women.
Nicole Simon
Apr 7, 2005 at 7:54 pm
Babe, do you want me to check my stats again for you?
*ggg*
No, I have to conform, but I must be excused, because I am a notorious curious woman by nature. ;o)
I had it kind of down with Syssense but with the new features, it is not working *sigh*
James
Apr 8, 2005 at 9:39 pm
“Yeah, I seem to have that effect on women.”
heh that was good…
I don’t think that this effects most people very much, except for the short period of time they check it addictively. Unless your websites’ CTR is very fluxuant, it shouldn’t effect you very much at all.
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