What to Look For In Your Real Estate Blog Stats
Dustin on 04 2, 2006
I’m sad to report that we weren’t made an unbelievable offer for RCG, and we have no plans to change our name to either “Google’s Rain City Guide” or “Rain Zity Guide”. 
And now that it is April 2nd, I thought I’d get back to work by giving some advice on what to look for in the stats of your business blog.
It can be useful to know answers to questions like: Who is visiting my site? Where they are coming from? Am I giving them what they want? And (assuming you’re running a business blog), is anyone buying the product/service that I’m selling? To get at these answers, I turn to one of three different stat programs (all of them free!):
- awstats came installed by my internet service provider (ISP) and offers the best look at long term trends for me because I’ve had has been running the entire time I’ve had RCG. It always shows slightly higher stats than the other programs because it picks up everyone who visits the site and not just those who load the whole page and/or have javascript installed. For better or worse, my host only updates the awstats once a day, and they get aggregated by month so that I can’t really make head’s or tails out of what is going on “right now” using this stat program.
- MapStats has some interesting features that make it very useful for blogging. It not only maps all of the users out based on their IP address, but it also let’s me know where the latest visitors are coming from (i.e. what links they clicked on and/or what search term they used to get to RCG). It is updated every few minutes making it very useful in seeing what’s happing in the hear-and-now.
- Google Analytics is an amazingly comprehensive stat program that is probably better suited for sites 100 or 1000 times bigger than RCG (or at least sites that have a staff with time to pour over all the information it gives!). It includes tons of interactive charts and you allow you to reference and cross-reference by date and referrer (and ad program if you do that kind of thing). Like awstats, it has the disadvantage that it only updates once a day, and like MapStats it misses out on people who don’t have javascript installed and running. But the charts are amazing. To give you an idea of some of the things you can see with Google Analytics, I’ve included a chart of the “loyalty” of RCG readers:
[photopress:rcg_loyalty.jpg,full,centered]
(You can read the chart as saying “In March, 10,254 visitors came only once while 743 visitors have been to Rain City Guide more than 200 times.)
Interestingly, the loyalty chart reminds me of something said by Niki Parekh of HouseValues at the MIT Forum that has resonated with me. The topic was how real estate agent using HouseValues system have to be patient because it can take months, if not years, between the time when a home owner contacts HouseValues looking for a home valuation report and the time when when they are ready to sell their home.
The relevance to the loyalty chart is that I have this not-too-small hope that more and more of the home buyers and sellers who read Rain City Guide regularly will begin to take advantage of Anna’s referral service when they are actually ready to buy and/or sell a home. While a dozen or so people contacted Anna in March, there is still plenty of room for this service to grow, and I was glad to hear Niki highlight the importance of keeping a long-term view of things.
More Stat Fun
On a related note, I’d feel like I was hiding something if I didn’t give an update on our statistics at the beginning of the month (jan, feb). Here are the same two stat charts updated to include data for March:
[photopress:unique_visitors_march.jpg,full,centered]
[photopress:total_visitors_march.jpg,full,centered]
One last thing
And finally, Happy Belated Birthday to Merv’s blog in Virginia . If you want a little background on why Merv has been so successful at real estate blogging, check out the interview I did with him back in December.
About the Author: Dustin Luther
- Author's website: http://www.raincityguide.com/
- More posts by Dustin
- email the author
15 Responses to “What to Look For In Your Real Estate Blog Stats”
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My blog stats show which articles people read more than others or at least which catefories they visit more than others. I was curious if the articles that have the most comments on RCG is an indication of which posts people have read most?
They are definitely related, but not always…
For example, the article you wrote on Flip This House only had three comments but was the 2nd most clicked on article of this past month. (It was picked up by two very popular message boards: A&E and Television without Pity).
I was thinking I would list the most popular and the most commented on articles again this month, but the post got kinda long as it is. Besides, I think it would be more interesting to have these two options constantly displayed on the sidepanel in a “running total” fashion (as in “most popular post of the past 7 days”). I’ll look into installing a plugin that would do just that!
Dustin,
Congrats on the surge in traffic over the past few months!
Luckily my new Single Family Development blog isn’t in the same readership category as RCG or I would reallllly be getting my butt whipped.
Also I couldn’t agree more that thinking long term in your RE marketing is the way to go. RCG will definitely bear fruit down the road. But just like farming crops this is something that takes persistence and perseverance. You have to stay solid on your efforts.
keep up the good work!
Dustin, thanks I seriously love your posts on blogging. they’re really helpful. I have been blogging for 2 months now and Im pretty stoked with the 1100 hits I have clocked so far. Most of my traffic comes from craigslist.org, google or MSN search. I use sitemeter.com because its free and simple. I like that it monitors the outclicks and refferal pages. P.S who went to burning man and took all the cool pictures pictures in the art section? Raincity camp next year?
Brian
http://tracyrealestate.blogspot.com
Oh, I don’t know — Rain Zity Guide has a certain ring to it.
I think I might have to take down some of those stat sites you’ve linked to for experimentation. That’s very nice. (as is that hit surge you’ve experienced!)
Regional Real Estate Blogs – Moneysmartz Category Updates…
Blogging is an easy way for real estate agents, mortgage bankers, and other real estate professionals to promote their services. Regional real estate blogs offers property listings, mortgage information, economic data, news, and even local activities a…
Dustin, congratulations on the outstanding increase in traffic over the past few months.
I just started my own real estate blog for the Houston area and numbers like these are a big inspiration for me. (So much so that I mention your site in my second blog post!)
Keep up the excellent work!
- Jim
I use Google Analytics which is an incredibly thorough stats program that I absolutely adore. Though a small word of caution, don’t adopt the program unless you have loads of free time to waste!
Hi,
Congratulations on your traffic growth!! I just found your site today through an article posted on a social network site. There’s definitely some good articles on this blog. I ‘ll be adding it to my “Useful Links” page shortly on my own blog (FollowSteph.com).
Regards,
Stephane Grenier
FollowSteph.com
Founder of LandlordMax Property Management Software
How we can create a real estate bolg?
There are so many options I’m not sure where to begin. If you just want to test out a blog, Google offers a great solution that happens to be free.
Jim- Dustin certainly pointed you in the right direction. Google offers some very good solutions. If that doesn’t work for you, I might be able to help you out.
What stats are the most important Visits or Hits?
Visits or hits?
Neither… Leads!
[...] 10 things I learned from my stats tonight September 7, 2006 It’s been a long while since I posted about traffic on RCG. Two reasons come to mind… One, I’ve been swamped in starting my new job and never got around to updating my excel sheet and two, I knew we weren’t seeing much growth, so what’s the point [...]