My total page views are small (I’m almost embarrassed to say) but I’m working at making the content top quality. I’m doing interviews with people who are knowledgable in their fields and can leave the reader with an important idea.

I have a small fan base but I can see I can get a core group of the same visitors back . . . now, I feel one or two really strong posts once a week or once every couple of weeks and those will get passed along . . . and my readership base will grow and strengthen.

Similarly with Page Views. Did someone view a lot of pages on your site because they enjoyed the site so much they needed more or because they couldn’t find what they were looking for?

Statistics are very useful, but you can prove anything you want with the same statistics if you look hard enough.

I think it’s good that people are looking at time spent, but it still needs to be seen in conjunction with what your other metrics are showing.

For example, when I start up my browser in the morning, I always check my email in my first tab, and open up the administrative areas of my blog and a couple of other sites I take care of in the others. Thrown into the mix might also be some other blogs and sites I like to keep track of on a daily basis. Now my browsing session usually involves me clicking on a mail in my inbox and then switching to another tab, this switching between tabs happens everytime I load a new page, because this way I am doing something else while all that loading is happening, and I find I use the time more efficiently this way.

As a result, my mail window might be open for 30 minutes to an hour. And a similar situation can arrise whenever I am going through a whole list of things on a site — like a forum, for example. This means my actual eye-ball time on the site would be something like 5 minutes while it would technically show that I had stayed on for 50 minutes. That is quite a large discrepancy.

What it comes down to is that time spent on a site is as fallible a measure of site popularity as page views. In fact you could even claim that page views is a more real measure in the sense that it measures an actually measurable quantity, i.e. – how many times a page was accessed on the server. Unless someone uses blatant and deliberate spoofing techniques such as scripted robots to hit a site, page views are a real measure of how many people arrived at a page. On the other hand there are many situations when time spent on a site can be the untruth even without any planned deceit. What happens if I keep a site on while I answer the door or go to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee?

Sure in a completely controlled environment where the viewer is almost a test subject in a lab (which might be the case for services such as Neilsen specifically), these sort of specific abnormalities and gaps in time measurements can be factored in and actually not measured, using advanced instruments or systems. But, when you’re talking of standard metrics methods involving a little code inserted into your site or server software, there is no way to measure time spent on a site accurately without drastic breeches of privacy for the user.

For that reason alone, I would say page views are not going anywhere.

Some of the search parameters they use through Google, only bring my page up because I used a specific phrase in my post, and I am surprised they still clicked on the site. However, they don’t stay long.

I’m very happy if they convert that first initial visit to a long term one where they keep coming back. That return visit number is growing…

I (partially) agree with this comment. Until we know what people are doing during the time spent on a site, it’s hard to determine how valuable this metric is. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s a useless metric, but I know that I’ll often open several pages in individual tabs, and then close those tabs as I read them.

If it takes me 10 or 15 minutes to finally get to the last tab I have open in my browser, it’s going to appear as though I spent a lot of time on that page, when, in fact, it’s entirely possible that I only spent 30 seconds actually viewing the page.

Like any other metric, it must be combined with others to provide real value. When looked at in isolation, “time spent on page” is no more useful than “number of page views” is.

Would love to see what kind of numbers you have for time spent on site and bounce rate. I’m currently at 2:59 and 63%, but its always good to see what I should be striving for. Thanks!
Brian

So for me, it depends on the kind of site.

If they are going to be looking at time in seconds then this might be effective — someone spending two seconds at a site is probably barely reading the title, let alone the post.

Otherwise I think this could penalize popular blogs where the posts are short and readers are familiar with the material.

In fact today I read this article after clicking the rss link and then left. Later I decided, after thinking about what I had just done in relation to what I have noticed on my own site, to return and post this comment.

While I agree that I do tend to look at time spent, and bounce rate, I also look at page views as it relates to new unique visitors, and return visitors. I don’t think you could base a rating solely on time spent and totally ignoring pageviews.

later all and have a profitable productive blogging day

Quality of traffic is king over quantity. But what if I put hypno-toad on my front page and visitors are hooked for hours at a time, will my site shoot up the rankings?

I) Visitors arriving: Where they arrived from, where they clicked on my site and how long the stayed.
2) Visitors Leaving: Bounce rate is the key and exit page.

Vijay