In March this year I posted about a service called MyBlogLog (affiliate link) – an online service that tracks where people go when they leave your blog by looking at the outbound links that they click.
I originally used their free service which tracks just the most popular outbound clicks each day but have more recently upgraded to the full Pro service ($25 per year) which tracks outbound links in real time.and gives a longer list than just your top ten outbound links for the day.
Whether you go for the free or Pro version this is a very useful service that could really change the way you blog.
At first I just found knowing where people go when they leave my site interesting but didn’t do much with the information – but then I started to take a more strategic look at the information MyBlogLog supplies and realized that it had very useful applications.
For instance I found quite quickly on one of my blogs that many people were leaving my site to a dead link (not good). I also discovered that the most clicked upon links on my blog were in a certain position on my blog and changed my layout to maximize the return of this position.
I also discovered a couple of other site that I was sending significant amount of traffic to without knowing it. I was able to deepen my relationship with these sites as a result.
It was also useful to track the performance of some of my text links with advertisers and report back to them that their ads were doing well (or not) in relation to other text ads. We tweaked a few ads and found wording that performed better.
All in all the $25 outlay was well worth it for me and I’d recommend the service as being very useful (even the free one – especially for lower traffic sites). I have heard of other outbound link trackers that are free but haven’t tried anything else that is this easy to use.
My only real continued wish with MyBlogLog is that they’d be able to track Google Adsense links as well as other links and that they’d somehow track which pages on my blogs (I have thousands of pages) the links are coming from.
I hope the recommendation is helpful for readers.
Sounds cool … something that bloggers should really check out. For one thing, it’s always a good idea to know about your visitors’ behaviour
Just what I needed, more stats!
I will test it, since I have a low traffic site, like many german language blogs, I will use the free one.
Maybe upgrading after a period of testing.
As Jon says: Stats and more stats…
The idea to optimize position and wording of outbound links is very good.
Hi
Once again thanks Darren for helping me to develop my blog. I think these stats will be invaluable and I’ve signed up which will put a bit more cash in your pocket! I’ve even added the live feed to my site http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog which shows hourly what links are being clicked on.
Connected
I’ve signed up as well. I didn’t know this service yet (looks like I should go read more of your rpevious entries now, in order to not miss out on other things like this!), but I like tracking stats, and the free version should be enough for starters, as the blogs I’m testing it with right now are fairly new.
Great resource. Thanks Darren! I signed up for the free service, and will upgrade once I get used to how it works.
I learn at leat three valuable lessons every time I visit your site. :o)
Nice, more stats to play with :) good tip
It really becomes an addiction if you don’t watch out.
I’ve been using Stat Counter for all of my stats, and I’ve been really happy with it, but the one thing I wish it would do is this.
I’m definitely going to give it a try.
My hope is that I can use to try to better determine the type of things that my readers are interested in.
Thanks… again, Darren :)
They might be able to track your adsense ads if you used server-side includes and not client-side.
I know some people have done this but I’m not sure if its aviolation of the adsense terms. I need to research this anyway for my own blog.
Hi Darren,
I’ve been using MyBlogLog (free) for a bit too, and it does seem to be useful, but am yet to really make use of the stats.
You mentioned tracking Google AdSense clicks – have you seen http://www.adsenselogger.com/ ? It’s a PHP / Javascript script to supposedly do just that – I’ve had a quick look at it, but not yet implemented it anywhere, so can’t guarantee it works, and I’m a bit wary of testing it because I’m unsure whether it contravenes Google’s terms and conditions (guess I’d better re-read them!).
Anyone got any thoughts?
Hi Darren:
This is Todd with MyBlogLog. Thanks so much for the fantastic post.
We are still working on the Google link tracking (w/o breaking their terms of use), but we have actually had the referring page tracking integrated for over a month now.
Based on your comments and an IM we received from Andy @ Waxy, we have updated the interface to make the feature stand out a little more. When you login, you will see a “click to view” link next to each URL. When clicked, the link will load & display the referring pages for each URL.
Thanks again for the great post/feedback. I will be sure to keep you posted on the Google link tracking and our other upcoming features.
Hmm … the script they use does not seem to detect a click on an external link in Firefox if I use the middle mouse button to open the link in a new tab. Can somebody confirm that?
Since it is very common to use this method of browsing this should also be logged …
[…] I just read a story on Problogger about MyBlogLog which tracks what links site visitors click on to leave your site. Even though I don’t have any adverts on my site where I need to track their effectiveness I think this data will be invaluable as it will tell me where my hotspots are and what links work and which ones don’t, to help me drive traffic back into my blog. […]
[…] When you first see my profile, it says that I’ve been a member since November 10, 2006 .. but that’s not true. I’ve been a member since July 28, 2005 .. when I first heard about it on the Problogger site. On July 31, 2005 my “pro” trial was downgraded to the “basic” version .. and although I still maintained all of the required code in my headers of my main two blogs, PetLvr and 1800HART .. I pretty much forgot all about it. It was on November 10, 2006 that I received an email from “Eric Marcoullier, one of MyBlogLog’s founders” to personally thank me for joining the site. I blogged about it in this blog, as the November 11, 2006 Quickie and even noticed I already had 22 communities! […]