I am a numbers nerd. You know this. And it doesn’t get any nerdier — or cooler — than analytics.
(You can catch up on all of my recommendations in my Blog Homework series.)
When it comes to tracking traffic, I love two tools.
1. Google Analytics (the big kahuna and the one I use for page views, unique visitors, etc.)
2. Clicky (the plugin that I use for real-time traffic, referral links, search terms, etc.)
My hat is tipped to the one and only Theodora of Losing Weight in the City, who insisted that I try this tool many months ago. She’s right. It’s awesome.
(That spike came the day I announced that I’m eating for two.)
In particular, I love Clicky because it helps me track down the source of traffic spikes in real time. If a post is getting a lot of love in the middle of the afternoon, I can see which source is sending visitors my way.
(Jeepers, Meghann!)
I also find the search terms tool much easier to use than GA:
You can look at a given time period — say, the last day, the last week or the last month — and even (with premium plans) set up alerts and other automatic updates for specific criteria that you set.
This is a plugin, so to use it, you need to be self-hosted and on a platform that Clicky supports. And I still would rely on GA when doing formal reports to sponsors or ad networks.
Overall, I highly recommend adding Clicky to your toolkit!
About Katy
I am in serious love with Clicky…but you obviously know this. Also super cool is their Chrome plugin–I can see at a glance at any time how many people are on my site without having to open up the whole dashboard.
Awesome! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you – this is great info and I am going to check it out. Very helpful!
I have GA and almost never use it. I just look at my stats in Jetpack. I think I’m too lazy to check multiple sources. But also, I don’t make money off my blog so I guess it doesn’t really matter for me. Nope. I think I’m just too lazy. Sigh.
I just downloaded it. Thanks for the recommendation!
Heeding your post, I decided to try out Clicky for myself. I love the idea of being able to see the analytics in real time.
Thanks for the tip!