I just signed up for an account. Thanks for the heads up. Phaedra

Maureen,

thank you for this info...but what is a "beta" and why does that change anything.....boy when it comes to technology things I really fee l stupid :)

Phaedra:  Good luck.

Kathy I was going to say a beta is a fish but found on Wikipedia: " Betta, a genus of fish, often misspelled Beta"

I think Wikipedia is a great place to look up words that you don't understand when it comes to technology. Here's what they had to say about this kind of beta:

Beta on Wikipedia 

It is part of the release process, kind of like not ready for primetime in many cases.  The BlogRush Widget which has been frustration for some of us is a beta.  You can not expect everything to go right or smooth during the beta phase.  If you look carefully at Discover Columbus I had two little temper tantrums when things did not work right.  I always think knowing it is a beta 

When Localism was introduced last fall it was a beta, I am not sure if it ever was considered to be out of beta... but it just never really progressed.   Now knowing what happened  with Move Inc. it is kind of more understandable about Localism being the way it was for so long. 

They are redesigning Localism, I don't know that they will say it is a beta when it is introduced ...  

They called the changes in the URL at RT blogs a  beta, 

 Hectors's Thoughts -  Thinking Allowed - The Beta  Hector is a Tech person at RealTown.   good guy!

Monika is still ranking high with her RT blog on certain searches and she hasn't posted there in awhile.  I don't think it's stupid to post on both as you just might receive different readers as well.

Maureen- thanks for the info...and I didn't really think it was a fish :) :) I saved the link you provided....and will read it tonight.

Maureen - thanks for the info I will take a look but how do find the time to blog in more than one place. I have a hard time just keeping up here.

Hi Maureen,

The folks at Real Town (Hector Virgen and the Blog Crew - sounds like a rock band name, doesn't it?) Were working on the rollout of these improvements for months before they were implemented. Fran (Frances Flynn Thorsen, the managing editor there and my coach for Project Blogger) kept telling me it was coming and that it would make a big difference.  I'm the first to admit that I was frustrated, unhappy, and thinking about pulling my blog off that platform prior to the changes. But I felt and feel deep loyalty to those guys and wanted to give them a little time. Boy am I glad I did!

In my case, you can see all my stats by going to the site meter at the bottom of my Live in Los Gatos site over on Real Town. My number of visitors has MORE THAN DOUBLED since they put in the changes.  Depending on the week, my average number of visitors had been about 30 per day. Now it is around 70. This week the numbers are skewed higher since I had an inordinately (wonderfully) high number of hits by folks looking for things to do in Los Gatos for Halloween (I had 171 visitors on 10/31) - so this week the average is 92.  Anyway, it's way more than "noticeable improvement". It's simply fantastic.

And overall, it is just growing and growing. I'm thrilled with the Real Town blog. Unlike the one here on Active Rain, you can personalize the header on RT and do lots of cool things with formatting for your audience that is just not doable on AR.

Good job, Hector and the Blog Crew!! My hat is off to you.......!

Thanks all for the comments.  

Mary:  I had a day this week with over 300 visitors (not unique visitors.)  I stopped blogging and shut down comments because of problems with the comment moderation for 10 days in October, so the numbers are with 10 days of inactivity. 

Most of the time I've had the RT blog it has been unnerving to see how low the numbers have been.  My blog born in January on WP.org has had a lot more traffic in comparison

There was a time last fall (pre Move Inc stuff ) when AR talked about possibley having premium blogs that could be personalized.  With AcitiveRain I personally like the uniformity because of the way it all flows together. Of course if you can get a Free blog that is personalized on RT as long as it gets traffic, why pay for the same on ActiveRain. Unless you can't get any traffic on your RT blog because search engines aren't finding it. 

As someone who has blogged on RealTown since 2005 I say thanks to Hector and RT blogs but I also say what took you so long?  When I invited someone at RT to ActiveRain last fall he said "just wait" our platrform will be better... It's been about 14 months.  Thats a long wait in blog years. It's too bad so many people have abandoned RT blogs because it took them so long to pull it together.

Hmmm, maybe I should go 'dust mine off' and see what you wrote about. Mine's been neglected for over a year, I think. I had it before I came here to AR, if I remember correctly. A agree with Jay, I don't think it's stupid either for just the reason he said, it just may be entirely different readers finding you. Thanks for the heads-up! John kept telling me to give it re-look, and I kept meaning to but just never did. He said good things were happening, and were going to happen. Looks like that's finally coming to be! Ann

Ann it's made all the difference in the world for traffic.  Having Google on your side is a good thing.  I don't understand why they did not do something sooner.

Any communication about the blogging platform is awfully dismal though.  I think I am still getting BlogTalk, just no one talks. Of course I seldom do... I tried to post something recently,a criticism and they did not post it. Frances asked for input on a problem, I input but it must have been too critical to post.

Dust it off... you'll be surprised I think.

Or maybe don't dust it off... I thought you had a new shiny, pretty RSS Pieces blog... and I looked and you do. Would you post to all three?

Your RT blogs archive is funny Ann, it goes back to 1969.  I will have to look at my archive and make sure it starts in 2005 when I started blogging.

 http://www.realtown.com/AnnCummings/blog/archive

It looks like you were blogging on ActiveRain before your RT blog.

I dusted mine off, yesterday. Added a few new things to it, including my activerain rss feed. We'll see, I'm having my wordpress.org built. But, number don't lie and Mary and Francis are awesome, so maybe I'll post there today and see what happens. I did notice in the cross over, my photo went away and I had to reload it. Maureen, I'll try anything and if it doesn't work, drop it like a hot potato.

  After Bloggers Connect when the Jim Cronin and Jeff Turner were talking about traffic  and they said Blogtopsites is a good way to measure traffic. This number is my blog on AR. If you look at my RT blog, it's down in the 40's (the lower the better.) I think my WordPress.org blog is up in the 80's or 90's. 

I have so much content on my RealTown blog I could tell from the searches on my blog (I use Google Analytics for that for both CBB and DC) people were ending up on my RT blog for Halloween searches in early October because of content from 2005 and 2006 because Google was finding it.  I just don't have that kind of content for consumers on either my AR blog or my WP.org blog.

I am not so sure any blogging is going to work if it is treated like a hot potato, because you have to have content.  I am sure it will be more fun for people on RT blogs to blog, knowing they have traffic but it still is not going to have the comments like AR.

Maureen this has been an interesting discussion. Wow, that is awesome that you had 300 visitors to your Real Town site last week. That makes sense that once Google "saw" your site, the stuff from 2005 and 2006 would get pulled up. That makes me think that as the holidays roll around, it is not a bad idea to return to those old posts and put a link to the current year's activities for the same holiday. I did a tiny sticky at the top of my blog that led to my Halloween Events post that was big (and done fairly early so not near the top) and that seemed to work well. I'll be scrounging up Thanksgiving things next, in fact.

Thanks again,
Mary

Mary I believe most day last week were over 200.  I am going to miss Halloween badly...it's been back down to 80 some for a few days.  If you look on BlogTopsites there's a place where you can click on the stats and there is a graph for the last 30 days. It shows the day that Google Analytics says was over 300 as over 400... (this is hits, not unique visits.) I don't get hung up on the difference in stats between G.A. BlogTopsites, MyBlogLog.com etc. I don't care which is right, how they differ.  I look at GA to see what people are searching for.  I look at BTsites to see how my three blogs compare.  Worrying about how the stats work, if they are accurate is not time well spent. Posting an entry that has content that  people are searching for locally does.

I don't believe RT has superior Google Juice to AR now, just superior Google Juice to what it had. 

I am not sure if Thanksgiving will give the same kind of search, Isn't Thanksgiving more family and food.  Christmas should...or "The Holidays." I have some Hanukkah because I love the story of the Maccabees.. I feel a bond...  I think I have lots of Christmas stuff from 2005 on it, I am not sure about 2006.  I hate doing time sensitive blogging (events.) What I was seeing on my RealTown blog was people searching for Trick or Treat times, local Halloween events very early in October.  It is purely LOCAL traffic.  Are they looking to buy a house? Not necessarily but maybe when they are, they will think of me.  Maybe not.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I have been trying to think what I can do to replace the Halloween traffic... I just might have to do something I did not want to do.

I wonder if I should put a new post up on RT blogs...but I worry about too much duplicate content and I'm not mad writing machine...have my WP.org and AR to keep up with.  

Of course we can't blog on all the options available to us.  I just had such a big bunch of stuff on my RT blog I hated to dismantle it. I am glad I hung in with it and can see first hand the changes they made and how it affects traffic. 

I miss Halloween though. I got so much traffic from Halloween posts.  

Oh my...I need to learn how to get back into my blog over there! Yikes.

Maureen Great discussion you've generated! The search engine games is such an interesting one and it sounds like you really have a handle on what is and what isn't working! I've worked with Hector and the RT gang and have a lot of appreciation for their help!

Hi,  Just joined Real Town too.  Thanks for the information. 

Deb - it's considered spam on Active Rain to include a link (to yourself, your sites) in your response, FYI.

Welcome aboard!

Well....I guess I made an AR error! My sincere applogies to all who were offended by my bumbling error.  I put my realtown address down to acknowledge that the URL was done the right way as indicated in the original blog.  I guess that  this mistake proves that I am just not able to keep up with all the rules, regulations, and laws that affect my life on a daily basis!  It  just seems  overwhelming at times.

Deb wrote: "I put my realtown address down to acknowledge that the URL was done the right way as indicated in the original blog."   The system does that.  It's nothing we do or don't do.

There are not a lot of rules about blogging or social networking.  It's really just common sense and respecting others.  There's a link to the  community guidelines at the bottom of the screen. 

Welcome to both ActiveRain and RT blogs... 

Deb edited her earlier post, which had included a link to her AR profile (but she took the link out).

Deb, please don't be offended. I thought you'd want to know since it's not at all intuitive that we're not supposed to put links to our websites or pages on comments. I did the same exact thing when I was new and had no idea it was a no-no.

I think the reason for that rule is that some folks would go around and make comments on other folks' posts and basically their comments were full of links to themselves - so thinly veiled ads. That is NOT what you were doing (or what I had done either) but I'm pretty sure that's the reason why the rule happened.

Deb, again, welcome aboard!  I hope you will have as much fun here as I do.

Maureen thanks for the post.

I just joined RT & have been on AR for some time now.

It seems like I'll get more out of AR, but have to try everything out there. 

It is different.  I like the traffic yet lack of  comments on my RT blogs.