While re-evaluating the ranking scheme for Pinoy Top Blogs, I realized that some prevalent factors on blog traffic statistics are not a guaranteed measure to determine who should be on top and who’s not.
Two of the better metrics used here are the Unique Hits and the Total Hits. Unique Hits refer to an inbound traffic of a unique IP (supplemented by cookie tracking) to a specific blog. Total Hits refer to the cummulative number of page requests for the entire blog.
Many would argue that Total Hits can be easily rigged as the individual or group may be the only ones contributing to the traffic artificially. This is usually done by regular refresh of the pages or using a time-bound feature of certain browsers to automate the page reloads. However, using a cookie that only expires after 24 hours can prevent this from happening (unless of course they manually delete the cookie every page load or completely blocked by the browser altogether).
Using Unique Hits holds much promise in the sense that it only counts the unique IPs in the traffic. However, this method can inadvertently exclude a lot of legitimate stats like corporate/university networks which only uses one single public IP. Likewise, those with dynamic IPs gain an edge in contributing to the stats, an issue raised here. On the same thought, unique hits coming from search engines are one time visitors and does not necessarily (or significantly) contribute to the overall standing of a blog in the rankings.
A lot of toher questions have been raised as well. “Does a blog with 10 visitors contributing 100 pageviews (10 repeat visits) a more popular blog than a blog with 100 visitors contributing 100 pageviews (no repeat visits)?
With these considerations in mind, I am tempted to formulate a hybrid computation to equalize traffic stats. As to how the formula would look like, I still have to figure it out.
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I say we should not get too granular on our metrics such as using pageload as a metric. Pageloads are driven by different blog layouts as such there will always be an apples to orange comparisson. Some bloggers prefer to hide part of their entries forcing readers to click another page for the entire article, this would push page views up. Other bloggers do not, keeping pageviews to a minimum.
Also, does it matter how readers get to the blog?
So lets keep things simple.
Let’s not get carried away with ranking. In the end, how much content and the quality of it is what matters to most readers. Blogging for the sake of ranking takes away the fun out of it. It’s true that anybody can get the top spot if they like. But then who are they fooling? If they want to waste their time refreshing their site and deleting cookies, let them. We have other more important things to do.
too bad im not pinoy enough to join this ring. I dont even speak. Im a 1/4 Visayan! whoo hoo!
being part of PTB is enough. It doesnt matter to me whether I gain hits from others and be on the top. I am satisfied being welcomed.
PTB tracks hits to http://www.yugatech.com/blogs/tracker.php. As long as a page has the link to tracker.php, layout should not be an issue. Now the smart ones…they’ll surely follow Mell’s advise:
“Some bloggers prefer to hide part of their entries forcing readers to click another page for the entire article, this would push page views up.”
“But then who are they fooling? If they want to waste their time refreshing their site and deleting cookies, let them.” - It won’t be a waste of time really. A few lines of code should do the trick.
*Unique Hits this Month* is really the Holy Grail.
lets just hope na makagawa pa ng ibang way, gaya nga ng sabi ni yuga, hybrid formula, para maging maayos ang ranking system. as for now wala tayong magagawa dun sa mga mahilig mag refresh (isa na ako dun, kasi laging nakabukas blog ko, pero before pa naman ako sumali sa PTB gawain ko na yun, naka exlude na nga yung IP ko sa site meter ko, good thing naka static ip ako), saka dun sa mahilig magbura ng cookies.
showing only the excerpts not necessarily means that the intention is to gain hits for PTB. For adsense maybe. But since AdSense seems useless for me, showing the excerpts is a nice way to maximize the page contents.
“showing only the excerpts not necessarily means that the intention is to gain hits for PTB”
I use it for adsense before. Ads is “stumble-able” if place under the “more” link. But since adsense recently only shows PSAs on my frontpage even when the post is in full text mode, I have no use for it. I use like mr nice ash.
What a nice MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM! I recommend you read an article on Google (the link I found on bizdriven.net) which tackles a similar problem as yours — how to rank importance of sites.
whether we change the way we change how we measure ranking, I dont think it will not change the ranking much. Just my two cents.
Got an email from the developers of evoTopSites and they were willing to give me the Pro version for free when it releases in two weeks.
With the additional features of the Pro version, I believe we could do some more tweaking in the rankings. Will explain my formula once it’s implemented.
Hey that’s great news! Might be better if you keep the formula secret (or vague) hehe less controversy!
I want to ask though about cookies, does the hit updates even when cookies are turned off or blocked by a firewall? Because if there is not any cookie checking then it’s possible to gain a hit simply by refreshing the browser while using a firewall to block cookie attempts.
pre,
di ko alam kung naitanong na, pero puede bang i-set yung counter na hindi binibilang yung visit pag galing sa kin? pag nag post kasi ako ng story madalas akong mag-edit, ayokong ma-skew yung data, para lang dinadaya ko yung sarili ko
thanks
roy
@ Marc
Yes, maybe that’s true.
@ Fleeb
Tracking is done both via the IP address and by cookies. They must pass both checks before the hit is tracked.
@ Roy
It doesn’t count any pageviews inside your WP-Admin, only those pages that are public. Besides, even if you continuously reload your page, it only counts as one unique hit.
this is really a cool project you have here yuga, i’m a little bit excited about the pro version that you are going to get. Keep up the good work!!!