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I found a nifty analytic site

Tonight I was checking some incoming links to my Reese's Pieces blog. I came across a link coming from a site I wasn't familiar with, so I checked it out. It's Quantcast.com. Lo and behold, it had a lot of information about the readers of my blog as well as quite a bit of other helpful information.

Now, I'm not sure why it's been tracking my blog as I've not installed any script for it to read, but for some reason the site has been analyzing my traffic. Since I use WP.com and can't install any javascript, I can only rely on the stats that WP provides which just tracks referring sites, most viewed posts, and click-thrus. However, Quantcast measures ...

Traffic trends: Generally the monthly stats that Quantcast is recording is only about 20% of what WP records and their trend doesn't match. I assume that if their javascript were installed this would become more accurate. They also track regulars vs the first-times. I don't place much value on this stat since cleaning off cookies changes a regular to a first-timer.

Geographic: this section shows traffic by country, state, city and DMA. I didn't find anything that looked surprising here as it seemed to be reflective of my commenters and emails. It would be a good tool to verify (or not) whether a blogger was hitting their targeted area.

Demographics: this was no doubt the most interesting section.

It showed that my readers are 50/50 male to female.
41% were aged 35-49 and 32% were over 50. Hey, I'm "old" so I would expect to attract an older crowd. Those are my clients, so it fits.
72% had no kids between ages 6-17; 28% had kids in that age range. Again, that pretty well fits my clients.
26% had household income between $30-$60K; 29% had incomes of $60-$100; and 29% had incomes of over $100K. They mentioned that the site is attracting higher incomes than is normal. YEAH ... love those folks with money!
38% had no college; 44% had college degrees; 17% had graduate degrees. In this area, they said the site attracts a higher educated crowd than normal.

Business: this section shows the number of readers who view the site from their home vs at their employment. A fourth of my readers are doing it on company time, otherwise they're being good employees with 76% reading at home.

Lifestyle: this section shows what other type of sites the readers like to visit. Thankfully, there were no p*rn sites on the list. That's reassuring.

If your blog platform allows you to add javascript, you might want to add this one. The site has been set up to allow web sites to gather data for the purpose of establishing media advertising dollars. For those of you who sell ad space on your blogs, you could use the info to determine how much to charge by proving that you're delivering their targeted customer. It's a pretty cool tool!

Enter your blog's address in the search box, to see who you're attracting. It's fun.

Posted by Elaine Reese, REALTOR® in central Ohio on 01/01/2009 11:19 PM

Comments (13)

marketing, reesespiecesofrealestatecom, blogging

13 Comments on I found a nifty analytic site

JAN

I dont know if I would trust info such as demographics etc from something like that because of the ability to get info like that is rather less than perfect.

I must say that I am very interested in learning how they capture the demographics data on people reading your blog.

To Shane and Steven: they explain how they apply the demographics. I checked several different blogs as well as some major company web sites. Each one was different, and seemed reasonable with the type of consumer for the product. For instance, I checked my former employer, and the demos matched what I know to be their consumer because we did a lot of market research to determine who our customer was.

Elaine,

I am also curious to know how they capture the demographics data like age and whether the people visiting the website have children between 6-17 or not. Are they conducted a survey when someone logs on a particular website? I had fun checking out several website including Realtor.org and activerain.com . The estimates seem reasonable for the traffic but somewhat I not convinced and would like to know how they determined that 72% of visitors to both Realtor.org and activerain.com do not have children 6-17 which is also the same data you reported for your website (perhaps it is just a general figure they came up with for all those who use the Internet or the expected percentage from all the websites they tracked).

JAN

Here's some info from their site discussing the tracking of a media audience:

Quantcast Media Planner ranks millions of web properties based on their ability to deliver your target audience - the way you define it. Unlike panel-based services, much of Quantcast's data is based on directly measured traffic (Quantified) - collected through a program publishers participate in. Other sites not participating in the program (non-Quantified) have rough audience estimates provided. Leverage powerful demographic, geographic (TV DMA), lifestyle interest, or brand affinities to drive unparalleled visibility across the web - major publisher sites, networks, vertical properties and more.

My site is UN-quantified. They note that they use directly measued traffic from Quantified sites. Those are the companies that have signed up with an account. My guess is they have been compiling a lot of market research data from those companies whose logos they show on the front page, then extrapolate that data to non-qualified sites. Most market research companies have access to many different sources (census, neilson, direct mail firms, etc.) to compile for statistical estimates. We're creatures of habit, and those cookies on our computer provide a lot of information on which sites we visit, how long we stay there, and which site we visit next. That's why I delete cookies every couple days. Didn't you ever wonder how a search engine site knows which ads to deliver to you when you visit? It's because of your cookies.

Elaine,

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It sure is a nifty site and I will share it with friends and colleagues.

Thanks for sharing those links with us, I love reading what i can learn from other sites

We just checked it out and so we are looking into it to see what it can do for us. Thanks for sharing it and have a great New Year!

Gerry: glad I could be of help.

Sonny: it's always good to share what we can.

Patty: I think it can be very useful for those bloggers who are targeting a specific audience. Used with the other analytic tools we have available, it can verify we're reaching our target or give us the info to make changes if needed.

Elaine, it says not enough information on all my blogs. Bummer. I was excited to see something. I probably won't install the code on my blog as I already haver site meter and getclicky. But, I hope it works for others, looks interesting.

Missy, sorry it didn't work for you. As I said, I've no idea why it has data for mine. If you want to see how the data looks - which is laid out very nicely - enter my blog address into the search box (ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com).

JAN

Interesting Elaine. I cam across that site a long time ago and actually saved the email I got from one of the staff there. Thye wanted me to try out there tracking service. I am going to have to check it out again to see if it is worthwhile.

Bill, be sure to come back here and let us know how it goes. I know you use a lot of helpful sites, so definitely am interested in your opinion.

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