Once you start blogging, you can easily become obsessed with your data (I did). Measuring your blog starts at site side metrics, but it doesn’t stop there. Achieving blog success is a function not just of how many people are reading your site, but also if key opinion leaders within your community are paying attention. Reaching this critical audience is part of the path to spreading your ideas and getting links from important sources. As Mike Grehan summarized linking at eMetrics, “If you’ve got a church site, you want a link from the Pope, not some random priest” (my paraphrasing). In this post, I’m going to show you a quick way to use Google Analytics to find out if other bloggers are reading your blog.
- Open the Referring Sites Report – Select your time period and then open the Traffic Sources report and then Referring Site
- Step 2 – Search for Known Bloggers – If you asked the right questions before starting a blog, you’re probably familiar with the names of the key bloggers in your niche. Scan the list of referring sites for their URL. For example, I can see that Judah’s blog sent some visits.
If you know the exact URL or a portion of it, search with the find source option at the bottom of the page.
- Step 3 – Link or Curious Blogger? – To find out exactly which pages sent visits from that site, click on the link in the referring sites report. If you see a name of a page, you can click through and find out which blog post or other link on their site that sent visits. What we’re looking for is some indication the blogger him or herself visited. There are a couple of ways you can divine this. First, look for wp_admin in the pages listed.
This is the administration console for WordPress (a blog platform) where bloggers can see incoming links and comments. I often click through to see who’s linking to me and you can see who else is doing the same.Some bloggers may get notification of comments and trackbacks via email, which is a bit harder to track unless you can distinguish their email program, as in the case of Justin who works at EpikOne.
Obviously, this method only works if you’re linking to a particular blog. You won’t be able to discover who all of your blog readers are, but you might see if the influential types are checking in. You can also see visitors if you install, and they have, MyBlogLog. See the sidebar to the right for an example.
In case you’re curious, here’s the list of some of the bloggers who have been checking in on Digital Alex. Who’s reading your blog?
Lorelle of Lorelle on WordPress
Robin Steiff at LunaMetrics
The folks at Copyblogger
Justin Cutroni of Analytics Talk
Judah Phillips at Web Analytics Demystified
Eric Peterson at Web Analytics Demystified
The affable Avinash of Occam’s Razor
The team at OX2 (Aurelie?)
And, not surprisingly, the founder of my company, Craig at Commerce360 Blog
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Alex,
I don’t know who visited your blog from the admin of our WordPress admin console, my feeling is that it is either Aurélie or Julien (or both). What I can tell you, is that it wasn’t me and here’s why:
As I’m a bit paranoid (well, actually I think that as a CEO I must be) what I do is that I copy the link from the admin console and paste it in another tab of my browser. This allows me to view who has sent traffic without showing who I am ;-)
You might think it’s odd, but I do this for over a year now.
Thanks for the explanation I’m sure many readers apreciate.
Have a nice day,
René
CEO OX2
P.S. And thanks for the link ;-)
Hey Rene,
That’s a great example of how you can’t make any assumptions about the data. Sometimes we forget about tabbed browsing (hello time on site) and the many quirky ways people like to browse.
Thanks for visiting!
Best,
-Alex