I first learned about the Googlebot in March of this year. I posted about it here. I was getting an unusually high number of hits (based on a reading from SiteMeter) from Mountain View, California. I didn't pay attention to the Goggle ISP reference or the "Googlebot" identity, until I actually Googled Googlebot (LOL).
While SiteMeter is an easy way to find information as to who is viewing your pages, it has become apparent to me that the algorithm used by Googlebot has a fascination for my site, since it spends hours every day on my page where it caches my posts. This helps when anyone Googles a subject that I've written about, because if it is cached by Google, then it will show up in their search engine. And since I have over 2,000 posts, I am sure it will take a while to cache all of them.
I like SiteMeter better for understanding who REALLY is reading my site, because unlike StatCounter, SiteMeter recognizes the bots and so it does not count them in the evaluation of who is reading the blog. Consequently in some ways, the StatCounter artificially inflates my "hits" because it is "counted" whereas SiteMeter gives me more detailed information. SiteMeter tells me the ISP address, how many times that address has visited my site (and trust me, some are in the 100's of times visiting my site), what pages they view, how long they are on my site and a whole host of other interesting news about the viewer, including the referring URL, the search request, and sometimes even the name of the website that the viewer is using, which I can then backclick on. Quite fascinating information to me.
Anyway, back to Google page rankings. They go from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. My little blog is now up to a 4 in the rankings, which if you consider the millions of blogs that are up and running, to even get a ranking, let alone a fucking 4, is awesome! On SiteMeter, it actually gives me, on some hits that were part of a Google search, how that particular page ranked. Overall, my blog ranks at 4, but some of my posts have ranked as high as an 8. Damn!!!!!!
Not too shabby, even if I do say so myself!
2 comments:
FYI... i've noticed this same behavior from the google bot and sitemeter. thanks for figuring this out. smiles
It skews the number of hits on sitemeter, but if you use statcounter, you get a better idea of who is visiting your blog because it does not count the "bot" hits.
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