Present Tense

Last week I was traveling for business (something I rarely have to do) and I learned that I am not the only one from my company that visits my blog. How did I know this? I use three different packages to track visits to this site. Why three? Each offers something a little bit different.

SiteMeter: Gives me immediate feedback about visits. There is even a link that tells you who is accessing the site right now(it shows visits from the last 20 minutes). Once I emailed a story submission to an editor who I knew lived in a certain town in Massachusetts. Later that week that very same Massachusetts town lit up on my SiteMeter chart. Not long after, that very same editor offered me some good news about my submission. Gotta love that kind of feedback.

WordPress.com Stats: This is an essential add-on widget for WordPress. The user interface is good for getting an idea which blog posts are most popular and seeing which strings are used in searches on your site.

Google Anylytics: Good for analyzing trends. Lovely user interface. For some reason the cities and towns that light up on SiteMeter don’t always light up on the Google Analytics map. I have no idea why this happens, but it’s annoying. I haven’t spent much time with this yet.

You never know what you’ll find when you start tracking visits to your site. I had always thought all those visits from my company’s domain where my own visits. As for you visitors from the company (you know who you are), leave some comments already. I know you’re out there.