Performancing.com has now another tool in their growing repository of stuff to help bloggers getting things done. Since yesterday you can register on performancing.com and get access to a weblog statistics tool called Performancing Metrics which is completely integrated into the rest of performancing.com (use of Drupal at its best ;) ) and which requires that you add a small JavaScript to the footer of your blog. While with something like that always an alert-bell sounds in my head, the JavaScript looks clean ;)
Just some points I’ve noticed:
- The JavaScript for WordPress in my opinion produces wrong data for hits on the frontpage where its variables are basically set for the latest post displayed there.
- When you yourself are visiting your blog, it appears to Metrics as if you’re just another normal visitor. Blogcounter.de for example offers a cookie that is checked to make sure, you yourself are not included in the statistics.
- While I really like simple interfaces, sometimes a little bit more would be … more ;)
For example I’d love to so all the referrers and not just the top 5.(Sometimes I’m just blind ;) ) - The JavaScript also always contains the post author’s email address, which is something I don’t understand.
- No Textpattern support yet.
- I’m somehow not all that sure, that the information about comments is correct. For example on one post I have a comment that is associated with a user that doesn’t exist on my weblog with an email address that both have nothing to do with the actual comment made to this post. And if the email address was accurate I’d really start to wonder, how Metrics got that sensitive data… Or perhaps I just misinterpret that field and this entry was generated when someone tried to comment and was blocked by that little question down there to keep spammers out :P
Anyway, from what I’ve seen so far, Metrics looks like … a nice entry point into the world of weblog statistics since it displays the stats relatively to your real posts and also displays their titles so that it’s easier for your to see, what topics people are reading on your weblog. But from what I’ve seen so far in video presentations etc. for for example Mint I have to say, that the Metrics interface is simply to minimalistic for me. Probably comes with using AWstats :P
On the other hand: If someone could give me an invitation to for example MeasureMaps, I could at least compare these two services ;)
Do you want to give me feedback about this article in private? Please send it to comments@zerokspot.com.
Alternatively, this website also supports Webmentions. If you write a post on a blog that supports this technique, I should get notified about your link 🙂