Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Tris and Andru are continuing to chat about metrics at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle. 

You can use either web-based (Javascript) tools or server-based tools for blog metrics.  All web hosting companies will offer you a metrics package.  Most people who blog will use web-based tools - but businesses who want to track things like how many people downloaded a video, pdf, etc. will want to use a server-based tool:

AWStats - Andru likes it because it’s visually appealing and laid out in an intuitive manner.
Urchin
Analog
ClickTracks - Tris likes ClickTracks a lot, and Urchin.

JavaScript tools:

Performancing - put a block of code into your blog template - you can see visitors, search engines, etc. at a glance.  The words they use are tailored to bloggers.

Google Analytics
MeasureMap
BlogBeat
MyBlogLog
Sitemeter

Tris recommends using two tools in order to make sure your metrics match up. And you’ll have to get a little geeky to set them up.

Search sites:
Technorati - will show you links, pages viewed, mentions, etc.
Feedster
PubSub
Alexa
BlogJuice - It gives you one number - it’ll build a metric and assign a number… 

Andru doesn’t like BlogJuice because it gives you faulty tools.  Like Alexa, which can only be installed on IE - not FireFox or Mac.

Dave Taylor mentioned Hittail.com, and I need to check that out.  I’ve never heard of it, but he’s so damn smart, I’ve got to believe it’s good.

Tris recommends FeedBurner.  Robert doesn’t like FeedBurner because we’re ceding control of our feeds to a third party… so what happens to feeds if something happens to FeedBurner.

Your total number of RSS subscribers is measured in big round numbers - probably understated by 20%.

Bloglines is good for measuring where subscribers come from.