whydowork.com

It’s a small trick that’s not that hard to figure out, but its a bit inaccurate. All you have to do is take a look at the Google Analytics code that most people have installed, and see what number a certain piece of code has.

First, right click on the page, then select "View Page Source", or whatever it’s called in your browser. Look for the Google Analytics code or use Ctrl+F to search for the word analytics. The piece of code that you see below is what you’re looking for.

See the number 44 that I marked with red in the pic above? Every time you add a new site to your Google Analytics account, it creates a new code, that just keeps increasing with each new addition.

What does the number 44 from my source code tell you? That at the time I created this blog, on July 31st, this was the 44th Google Analytics code that I generated, meaning I had at that time 43 prior domains or subdomains with Google Analytics installed at one time or another (yeah, I really like mini-sites).

I’ve said from the beginning that it’s inaccurate, because of a few simple reasons. The older the code that was created, the bigger the chance that it’s inaccurate. Some domains I let expire, some sites were deleted, some were added since July 31st when this blog was created and some don’t even use Google Analytics.

Still, it’s a pretty cool trick. Can’t find any use for it, but it’s cool anyway.

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As most of you know, the Technorati ranking is one of the metrics used to determine advertising rates and are part of the way your paid review rate is determined at ReviewMe. Having a high Technorati rank is something almost every blogger dreams of.

The Technorati bot usually visits when it is pinged, either directly, or through another pinging service. If it’s not pinged, then that perfectly good link goes to waste and does nothing to boost your rank.

You can solve this problem in a very simple way. Each time you get a pingback from a blog, and you don’t see the link show up in Technorati, simply go to the Technorati Ping form, paste the URL of the article that links to you and click the Ping! button.

With a bit of luck (sometimes it needs multiple pings, sometimes it doesn’t work at all), Technorati will add it and it will increase your authority.

Getting Evil

Now, as an extra bonus, I’ve found out that sometimes this ping strategy also works with non-blogs.

So, every time you get a link on a new non-blog domain that doesn’t use pinging (forums, sites, directories, social bookmarking sites), ping that URL where your link shows up to Technorati and in many cases it will be added to the Blog Reactions page, increase your authority and boost your rank.

Remember, your authority increases only when a new domain links to you, so don’t go pinging every single forum post you’ve ever made.

Due to the fact that it doesn’t always work, I’m not sure if this works if your links on that page have nofollow attached.

Be Careful

If you plan to get evil with this tip it’s possible that it will get you banned on Technorati. It might not, but then again, you never know.

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It seems my previous post on Gawker revenues got a bit of attention from various blogs, including Gawker and Valleywag. Bloggers in the industry keep telling me I’m wrong and I’m perfectly capable of accepting that.

But, I would like some clarifications from people that have experience selling that many page views to advertisers, because some of the reactions I’ve seen I didn’t understand.

First of all, why are you talking about unused ad space. Greg here talks about 40-70% ad space sold. Why is the rest of the ad space considered unused? What is this, 1995? Why not talk with Google, YPN or any other ad network that offers CPM and I’m sure they’ll be happy to fill your unused ad space (which means 40 million page views per month if you usually sell 70%) and maybe send only CPM ads your way. They might not be at $30 CPM but it’s better then using ads with your own blog. Considering that most of the Gawker readers are americans (80% of those that came to this blog from Gawker and Valleywag), CPM rates from other ad networks should bring a nice price.

So, I got two questions, which I would appreciate if anyone would take the time to answer them:

If they only sell 70% of their ads directly, why are the rest of 10 million page views considered unused ad space? Since 80% of the visitors they’ve sent me are americans, I’d imagine it’s still an audience that can be targeted by someone.

Why does Gawker price its ads at $30 if they can’t sell their entire inventory at that price? Is that the optimum price for their network?

If some non-troll experts could step up and answer these questions I’d appreciate it :).

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This method of checking the traffic for other websites is based on a simple fact: most tracking services offer the possibility of making the stats public if the owner wishes so and others don’t even ask. Some do that, and you can count on the search engines to index those pages. A pleasant surprise was Performancing, which blocked their Pmetrics stats with the robots.txt file.

Some give you keywords used by people to reach those websites, others just the level of traffic. I’m sure you can use some of them to find some new keywords to target, or just to satisfy your curiosity.

1. Sitemeter

site:sitemeter.com site summary

Found a couple of nice stats for some big blogs like those of LifeHacker, Gawker or InstaPundit. I’m sure there are more. 2 million visits for Gawker this week and 3.2 million for LifeHacker. Nice!

2. StatCounter

site:statcounter.com summary

These guys also show the keywords, which I like. Just one example here, since I couldn’t find big sites so easily. If you got the time or you can make a tool, I’m sure there are some gems at StatCounter as well.

3. Awstats

“Created by awstats”

You have to come a bit through these searches, but you can also find some goodies here. As example, the stats of a subdomain from Princeton University. No keywords here but there are others that have them.

4. GoStats

site:gostats.com summary

I like these guys. You don’t even have to use the above search to see the traffic of the websites they cater to. They have all their websites in a directory with websites arranged by category. Look here. Also, you might be interested in what kind of traffic GoStats themselves have.

(thanks for the tip Richard)

Any others you know to add to this list?

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