And statistics

[randy_byers]

So I've finally discovered the Stats/My Guests page for LiveJournal (accessible via the Profile menu), and I'm puzzling over the results. One thing I don't understand is the Journal stats versus the Entries stats. For example, if I look at the Journal stats for yesterday, it says 100 unique people looked at my pages or pages I commented on in other

Comments

viewing pages

[anonymous]

I read the comments on your posts almost all the time, but I rarely add my own comment. I don't have my own LJ and thus my own Friends Pages; I come directly to yours and the only time I look at most other LJ pages is when I can decipher someone's arcane pseudonym and realize it's someone I know. (Bless you, Kate and Jane.)

-- Denys

Re: viewing pages

[randy_byers]

One thing I didn't mention is that the Journal stats break down visitors between LJ users and all visitors. So for example, yesterday of the 7 people who looked at my journal directly, only 4 of them were LJ users (or at least were logged on to LJ when they looked). I figured you were one of the other three!

Re: viewing pages

[anonymous]

That's a useful break-out. Kudos to whoever thought of it. Do they offer a CSV download of your stats?

-- Denys

Re: viewing pages

[randy_byers]

I'm not seeing any obvious download tool.

[kalimac]

I read LJ almost entirely via my Friends page - that's what I like most about LJ, that it has this full-text aggregate it calls "Friends page" - and delve into individual posts if I want to make a comment, or read existing comments, or read behind a cut. I read others' full journal pages - i.e. their one-user accumulations - if I'm checking out somebody I haven't friended, or if I'm looking for a particular past post and remember who wrote it.

It's not clear to me whether the stats measure people who read you on their own Friends page or just those who go to individual posts or full journals. But it is nice to confirm that one is getting read one way or another by people on one's FL who are not currently making comments.

[randy_byers]

I believe different stats measure different things, and the larger numbers in my examples above are for those who are loading my entries on their Friends pages. There are actually other stats that show you how many times pages with your stuff get looked at, even if it's the same person (denoted by cookie) loading the page multiple times.

[holyoutlaw]

Well, you've just gotten a couple more click-throughs, because I've clicked through from my friends page to this post, to read the comments; then seeing you had comments on yesterday's post about TGTBTW I went back and read that.

I'll go look at the Stats/MyGuests page.

[randy_byers]

Woohoo! Maybe I can trick more people into clicking through to drive up my stats! Then I can retire satisfied.