Each quarter of the year I write a post about how my traffic statistics have been for the last 3 months according to Google Analytics. Now it is time for my 3. quarter report of 2012.
Woot woot, my Blog is a PR4 Blog but…
In the beginning of August I realized that Google had made another Page Rank update. I went to check if there had been any change or if my Blog still were a PR3 blog. I was very happy and surprised to find that my blog was promote to a PR4 blog 🙂 Well that was just great, but only a couple of days later I read that Google Page Rank does not have much impact on Google Search result anymore 🙁
It is always difficult to know what is right and wrong when it comes to Google’s Search Engine’s algorithm, but if I look at my numbers of the last 3 months my promotion have not had any positive impact on my organic traffic since I was promoted in early August.
My Google Analytics Stats for Q3 2012
Traffic Types
- Search Engines: 73.36%
- Direct Traffic: 12.19%
- Referring Sites: 12.24%
- Campaigns: 2.21% (Feed burner)
Search Engines
How my Search Engines traffic was spread across the 3 big Search Engines: Google, Bing and Yahoo. Notice that I still get more traffic from Yahoo than from Bing. Will Bing ever be able to be any serious competition to Google?
- Google: 94.88%
- Yahoo: 2.89%
- Bing: 1.05%
Top 5 Referring Sites:
- techworkdk.tumblr.com
- t.co (Twitter)
- google.com
- stumbleupon.com
- warriorforum.com
Top 10 visitors by Country:
- United States
- Denmark
- United Kingdom
- India
- Australia
- Canada
- Sweden
- Finland
- Netherlands
- Germany
My traffic by country is almost the same as in my last report. Only new country is Finland (Nokia land).
Conclusion on my Traffic Report
Compared to Q2 I had a little drop in traffic (22.670 vs. 21.757 visits). I saw a big drop in the middle of August, but it is back on the same level as the start of August. It is a little bit disappointing for me that I have not been able to improve my traffic over last quarter, but I think I can improve in the last quarter of 2012.
How about you. How has your traffic been for the last couple of months? Any thoughts you will like to share? Please drop me a comment below.
I noticed that you were a PR4 blog yesterday when I visited your blog. While it may not have a large impact on traffic levels, advertisers still like higher PR sites.
As for traffic, I’m sure it will start to pick up soon. It could take some time to recover traffic, but I’m sure it will increase.
My traffic had dropped at the beginning of the year, but has recovered nicely over the past 5 months. When most traffic comes from search engines, we can expect traffic to bounce up and down from time to time.
Hi Paul
I am sure that PageRank still have some effect, but maybe not as much as it did in the future. When I went from unranked to PR3 last year my traffic increased big time, but this time I have not seen any change in traffic. Good point about advertisers does care about Page Rank.
Hi Thomas, Actually, I’m thinking it’s those Angry Birds in Finland who are driving your traffic there. I hear they are big fans of your blog!
Thanks for sharing your traffic stats. It’s very helpful to see what’s going on with other bloggers. According to Google Analytics, I have 64% of my traffic coming from Google searches. Yahoo beats out Bing, but each had less than 1%.
My traffic tends to reflect the amount of tech news that’s current, even though I don’t always cover current tech news. July was very slow for me but August and September have been very busy.
It’s impressive that your Tumblr referrals are so very high. I will keep plugging away at Tumblr. My Twitter referrals are second after Google.
Thanks again for letting us peek under the hood, Thomas!
LOL – Carolyn. There is still room for improvement when it comes to my Finland visitors 😉
Thank you for sharing your trends for the last couple of month it is for sure interesting to hear how other tech bloggers have been doing. I am a bit suprised that Tumblr is working that well for driving traffic to my blog and will for sure keep on using. Facebook on the other hand have I not have much success with yet, but have also just created my Facebook Page recently. It might take more time to build up a good audience there.
Hey Thomas, sure, the increase in page rank will indirectly boost your search engine traffic (coz it increases your SE visibility). Although it is a number that we shouldn’t obsess, it is great to have a decent one, isn’t?
Hi Jane
Great to see you here on my own blog 🙂 It is for sure great that my blog now is ranked as a PR4 blog, traffic or not. It is not that I am doing that bad on Search Engine traffic. After all 73% of my traffic was from Search Engines, but we all want a little bit more right? 😉
How come no visitors from UAE? I always visit! 😉
Congrats on the PR 4!
Thanks Hajra
I just checked the numbers. UAE are only number 46. You will have to stalk me a lot more for Q4 to get up in the Top 10. Tell your friends in the UAE to do the same 😉
I’m from Asia, it hard for me to have traffic from United States, after google panda and penguin update, blog traffic drop but not so much. It show clearly that google update really do it work. But for me it never mind, i start my blog to improve my writing and english skill, So from blog i will make it as a habit to write in english.
Your google analytic same like me, mostly traffic come from search engine and google
Hi Juan
When I started my blog most of my traffic was from Denmark. It took me a while before my traffic from the US was higher than my local traffic. I have it the same way like you. I started my blog as a hobby project to improve my writing skills in English as well. If you want to get more traffic from the US you should visit some bloggers from there and start leaving comments on their blogs and try to connect with them on Social Media’s too. I am following you on Twitter now. I will recommend you to use the same picture on Gravatar and Twitter. It is important that people can recognize you when you leave comments. A lot of the people that are visiting my blog are people that I have seen on other blogs where I have left comments on. Just a couple of friendly tips. I hope you can use it. Have a great weekend Juan.
Thanks from your advice Thomas, i will take note about it
Thanx for sharing your reports. It encourages a new blogger like me to contribute more and more to my bog. Keep sharing in future too:)
I sure will. I relese my traffic reports each quarter of the year.
More than 26,000 is good enough. Congrats. I have never analyzed my GA this way. Perhaps, it’s time I do.
Hi Jena
I think you should. You can learn a lot about your visitors from GA stats: Where are they from, how much time do they spend on your site, bounce rate and a lot more.
Nice one Thomas, with all the hard work you put in to the website, it’s much deserved, keep doing what you are doing and I can see another increase on the way 😉
Hi Karen
I do hope that I can continue to improve my traffic in the future.
Congratulations for your blog which already has a pagerank 4, what do you mean about PageRank has no influence on the SERP? why be like that ? thanks
It seems to be a well-known fact that Google does not use Page Rank the same way the used to do, when it comes to Search Results. However it is still nice to have a good PageRank when it comes to advertisers 🙂
Honestly you should now work to decrease your dependence on Google, 73% search traffic is too much. Try to bring it down to 50%. Google is no longer the infinite source of traffic as it used to be, therefore it is better not to rely on it too much.
You should try to improve your referral traffic by sharing your content on more social sites. You can also use networks like Techspy. Also use some traffic exchange network to boost referral l traffic further!
Hi Nadeem
I know what you mean, but I think I would try to improve my referral and direct traffic instead of bringing down my Google traffic right 😉
I am not sure 50% will be possible in my niche, but maybe 60-65% would be possible. It would for sure be nice not to be that depended of Google Search and there changes in algorithm.
Search Engines: 73.36%
Direct Traffic: 12.19%
Referring Sites: 12.24%
Campaigns: 2.21% (Feed burner)
you site count is very pretty, my site 90% comes from search engine.
Thank you. 90% might be a bit high, but I am sure that you can change that if you work hard on it.
I notice your tumblr site has a PR3 of its own too! Did you promote it heavily?
I’ve experienced a bit of the opposite, a lot of my sites have dropped in PR, but long tail traffic has actually increased. I am very confused with the search engine algorithm updates.
Hi Nancy
I have not really done much to promote my Tumblr site. Search Engine algorithms are really not that easy to figure out these days.
Very nice statistics. I get most of my traffic from search engines and I guess it is high time to switch to other sources.
Hi Vicky
It is never good to put all your eggs in one basket. I am also trying to increase my other traffic sources so I am not to depending on Google.
Congrats on the PR 4 rank.I personally feel awstats is much much better than google Analytics.Even I get most of the traffic through Search engines,but now i am considering of starting guest posting on my blog.I’ve heard innumerable times about it.Lets see if it clicks or not.
Thank you Robert and good luck with the Guest posting.
I’ve experienced a bit of the opposite, a lot of my sites have dropped in PR, but long tail traffic
has actually increased. I hope next time my Blog Get PR6 🙂
In fact my Page Rank has just dropped from PR4 to PR3 on this blog after the November 2012 update. So far it has not had any impact on my traffic.
I agree with you. PR is updated every 3-4 months, so it shouldn’t be considered as a good metric for us. Pagerank and traffic are not related much nowadays.
I believe traffic of our blogs will increase in the Q4 thanks to the holiday season. 🙂
You are right Thomas that Google PageRank update is not driving more traffic to blogs anymore.
I don’t know if high page rank would not give us more traffic then what is the purpose of PageRank then? Funny! 😀
Hi Joe
Even that Page Rank does not have much impact on Search Results any more it is still difficult to get a high rankink. In that context I would agree with Arslan that it increases your authority and brand as a blogger.
Hey Thomas,
PageRank still affect our seo. It has some positive effect. Looks like more of yor traffic come from search engines. Great.. But you should not rely on them.
My website is a new one. You got PR-4. Thats amazing. It increases your authority and brand.
Thank you Arslan
Even that we do know how much weight our PageRank has to search result I do still care about my rank. Sadly my rank has just dropped from PR4 to PR3 in the November update, but I hope that I can get back my PR4 status in the future.
PR 4 is much better than 3 when you try to monitize your blog. Advertisers and (even more) the Ad networks treat blogs with PR 3 and less with one eye and PR 4 and higher with different one. The blogs with PR6 and above are much respected, needless to say. So having PR 1, 2 or 3 is somehow similar but gaining 4 can be considered as a promotion.
When you have high PR you can expect more paying Ads displayed on your blog even from Google. Gook work man, keep it up and enjoy blogging!
When my site was PR0, I got better ranking than now that i am having PR1. Still trying to get back to my feet.
PR4, that’s a nice work.right now, my site still PR0, hope It will rise fastly like your blog. Good luck!
Thank you Harry
I think you should. You can understand a lot about your guests from GA stats: Where are they from, how plenty of your time and effort do they invest on your website, jump amount and a lot more.
Many thanks for discussing your site visitors statistics. It’s actually beneficial to determine what exactly is happening along with other blog writers. Viewing these reports inspires me that mone blog could also gain such a high performance in couple of months. Keep sharing your stats. It’s really good to land on your page to know some real genuine stats.