giblet wrote:Unless you get a lot of traffic a handful of people leaving their browser windows open would skew the session length results, wouldn't it?

Off the top of my head I can think of metrics that they can use to level this out.

- is the computer cursor between point x and y on the screen
- is cursor moving
- could companies like google make algorithms to track cursor movement and engagement vs depth of article?
- could companies like google make algorithms to compare user habits and average time it takes to read a certain amount of words?
- are there additional tabs open (and is the "user" (sic) in that tab)?


Are there any search engine companies or analytics companies that make web browsers?

They know everything... I'm just coming up with these off the top of my head, but I'm sure there is like 100 more ways to figure it out through statistical analysis and the amount of data they have access to get it with in 99% accuracy whether someone is actually engaged with the page.

One of the other things that's really telling is the Page Depth statistic, used in correlation with the time on the site. Can help you weed out the ones who were there for an hour, but only on 1 or 2 pages. All in all, our engagement of our users is top notch.

OrangeDragon wrote:One of the other things that's really telling is the Page Depth statistic, used in correlation with the time on the site.

And then you take it and compare amongst 100 viewers or whatever... and use this as only 1 factor. There are just so many ways to get it accurate with computationally cheap methods.

I think GA also has real time stats (or they used to), so you can view users and what they are doing in real time.

Yeah, the General is addicted to that realtime screen, lol.

FreeSocrates! wrote:

OrangeDragon wrote:http://www.buzzfeed.com/mylestanzer/why ... ie-already

Really establishes how the # of views is fairly meaningless. Time spent on each view is much more crucial, as well as low bounce rates on a site like this one.

I'm not even reading the article, but I've been in the game long enough to say that it depends on the website.

More time spent on a page is not more crucial, it depends on what the viewer is searching for. Sometimes you need to look at a page for less time, because you need just a little information from it. Sometimes you need to look at it longer because the article is interesting.

(For forum websites I'd say "Time on Site Per Day" or something like that would be the best metric, but I can think of other cases where "page views" would be more important than that and can think of cases where "page views" is meaningless).

Bottom line, depends on the type of site.

with this i'd say that's partially true, but the goal should be that once they're there for that little bit of info to engage them in other ways to keep them there/make your site more memorable. for example even if they're just looking up information, try to sus out what OTHER information they would likely want, and provide that as well. that's engagement vs simple hits, and has been shown to be where the real marketing targets are.

The weirdest thing to me with our google stats are query statistics...

Things like people searching "CEO Cambodia Forum" where we show up on the first page (now) and not actually clicking on our site... to the tune of a click through ratio of only 58%...
Or "cambodiaexpatsonline" only having a CTR of 65%...

That's just weird to me.

OrangeDragon wrote:The weirdest thing to me with our google stats are query statistics...

Things like people searching "CEO Cambodia Forum" where we show up on the first page (now) and not actually clicking on our site... to the tune of a click through ratio of only 58%...
Or "cambodiaexpatsonline" only having a CTR of 65%...

That's just weird to me.

How do we rate with people googling "Ducks and Geese"?

zero impact. surprisingly.

though... we do rank #6 in google for: geese cambodia
and #3 for: ducks and geese cambodia

just no real impressions on the term it seems...