Written on May 2nd, 2008 at 05:05 am by Darren Rowse
My Top 10 Traffic Sources
This month I’m asking What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog in our sidebar poll.
I’m finding the results so far interesting. It’s still early to draw too many conclusions although Google is a clear winner so far with 49% of the vote (in comparison to all other search engines with just 1%).
A number of readers have asked me to answer the question for myself - so I thought I’d do for both ProBlogger and Digital Photography School here in a post. Following is the breakdown according to Google Analytics of the Top 10 Traffic Sources - including the percentages of total traffic.
You can see a few obvious similarities between the two with Google an obvious winner again (although the mix is different in terms of percentages).
Top Traffic Sources to ProBlogger:
1. google / organic - 42.89%
2. (direct) / (none) - 17.59%
3. google.com / referral - 5.10%
4. stumbleupon.com / referral - 2.54%
5. yahoo / organic - 2.05%
6. twitter.com / referral - 1.87%
7. lifehacker.com / referral - 1.74%
8. del.icio.us / referral - 1.65%
9. bloglines.com / referral - 0.81%
10. technorati.com / referral - 0.79%
Top Traffic Sources to DPS:
1. google / organic - 30.54%
2. (direct) / (none) - 23.31%
3. stumbleupon.com / referral - 9.15%
4. google.com / referral - 6.22%
5. yahoo / organic - 2.20%
6. images.google.com / referral - 1.15%
7. mail.google.com / referral - 0.99%
8. lifehacker.com / referral - 0.97%
9. mibrujula.com / referral - 0.71%
10. flickr.com / referral - 0.62%
Don’t forget to vote in the poll and feel free to breakdown your response further in the Poll Announcement Post.
47 Responses to “My Top 10 Traffic Sources”
David Hobson
May 2nd, 2008 5:58 am
I voted in the poll my top refer is Google.
Alejandro Reyes
May 2nd, 2008 5:59 am
I just started my blog april 1st so the results might be different long term.
But my top traffic sources so far have been:
Direct
Stumble Upon
Twitter
Google
Farfield
May 2nd, 2008 6:01 am
I saw in the other post (What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog) quite a few people mentioning Entrecard. I didn’t know about this, but I just installed it. We’ll see what it brings!
Aseem Kishore
May 2nd, 2008 6:05 am
My top traffic source is still Google by far! I definitely need to work on getting more from social media and direct visitors especially!
* Miss Universe
May 2nd, 2008 6:19 am
.
Bizarre as this may sound - our biggest referrers are Yahoo and MSN/ Live
Arjewtino
May 2nd, 2008 6:25 am
What’s the difference between Google organic and Google referral?
Markus
May 2nd, 2008 6:47 am
What percentage of your Visitors are new?
Mandy
May 2nd, 2008 6:58 am
Thanks for this Darren it’s really interesting to see a top blogs results.
This may be a stupid question but what does ‘direct none’ mean? Don’t laugh!
Dash Chang
May 2nd, 2008 7:28 am
organic=search result; referral=page other than search; direct=no referrer i.e. either direct URL or that the referrer option has been disabled by the user.
Facebook, TechCrunch, SAI beats social media bunch for ‘The New Economics of Advertising.’ Google, Yahoo results are similar.
-Dash
ramiro marques
May 2nd, 2008 7:33 am
People visit my blog mainly through Google. Google is the biggest referral to my blog.
Congratulations for you blog. I am portuguese but I visit it everyday. Great tips and info.
Thank you for your advices.
Kelvin Kao
May 2nd, 2008 7:37 am
Google tops my list as well. In the previous month I have:
google/organic
stumbleupon.com (Was stumbled a few days before the 30 days that so the effect was trailing off)
direct/none
google.com/refereal
image.google.com/referal (This, for some reason, led quite a hits to my site)
puppetvision.blogspot.com (Probably one of the biggest site in my niche)
emomsathome.com (Apparently calculated before the re-brand)
taxgirl.com/refereal (This one surprised me)
yahoo/organic (People don’t use yahoo search anymore, huh?)
blog.roodo.com (This is a Taiwanese equivalent of Xanga or LiveJournal)
Seduction Chronicles
May 2nd, 2008 8:19 am
google (organic) 49.18%
(direct) ((none)) 9.33%
images.google.com (referral) 3.82%
yahoo (organic) 2.88%
sargenation.com (referral) 2.71%
I’ve been focusing alot more referral and organic traffic lately.
Syed Balkhi
May 2nd, 2008 8:22 am
The highest traffic to my blogs are Direct by a small percent … Followed by Search Engines and than referrrers.. Not many people link to me :(
Joe
May 2nd, 2008 8:36 am
Most of my traffic comes from when I leave comments on other people’s blogs, so I guess referral. I also get quite a few hits from google image search. I do get some direct, but I’ll have to look at the stats more to really break it down…
Make Money Online
May 2nd, 2008 8:42 am
Google is the king I must say myself that’s where pretty much all of my traffic comes from, the rest are from social networks and other blogs.
Ryan McLean
May 2nd, 2008 8:45 am
Most of my traffic comes from stumble upon advertising and other blogs. However, I only have about 100 posts on my blog so far (I just started seriously in march this year) and I am believing that as the amount of posts on my blog increases then I will begin to see more and more traffic from google.
Del Sauzo
May 2nd, 2008 8:53 am
Since I just started a new blog seeing google as number 1 on a lot of lists makes me feel that there really is no way around SEO.
I guess I’ll focus more on this. Thanks for your post Darren.
Mitch
May 2nd, 2008 9:40 am
My main traffic source seems to be this one blog in particular, but I’m having trouble believing the number. Per Google Analytics, people are coming through at 5 times the rate from this particular blog than Google, which is number two. That just seems skewed incorrectly for some reason, as I think I’ve only ever made one or two posts on that particular blog. Weird.
Siddharth
May 2nd, 2008 10:45 am
For my site traffic comes from other sites I am an active visitor of in first place. Then Google and other follow. Google Analytics is really worth using.
Eric Thor
May 2nd, 2008 11:14 am
youtube.com (referral) 41.68%
(direct) ((none)) 33.00%
google (organic) 9.71%
stickam.com (referral) 2.52%
images.google.com (referral) 2.09%
I’ve been putting links to my website in all my youtube videos and also having the website appear in the credits and on my youtube banner is really working out for me. Stickam is like Ustream, but for a younger base.
Brad V.
May 2nd, 2008 11:42 am
Most of my traffic comes from Google as well. I have been concentrating on bringing back repeat traffic by making my hits more “sticky” so that people come back again and again.
Interesting results Darren! Thanks for posting!
Muscle Post
May 2nd, 2008 1:13 pm
I’d like to ask a question and would really appreciate as many answers as I can get.
How long does it take, roughly, for a blog to start seeing some organic traffic from Google? I know there are many variables (content, SEO, backlinks, etc.), but let’s say an estimate for an average blog.
The Masked Millionaire
May 2nd, 2008 1:19 pm
Darren I’m a little confused. All I hear about is how Twitter is the biggest thing in the world. Yet according to your numbers for Problogger Twitter only accounts for 1.8% of your traffic.
I’m sure that is quite a few people. But certainly leaves me wondering if more time and effort spent on Google really wouldn’t pay off better.
After all you do have a pretty decent (to say the least) dialouge going on with your readers on the blog.
Eli
May 2nd, 2008 2:22 pm
Interesting figures - can I ask though, how much traffic overall PB gets? :)
cb
May 2nd, 2008 4:12 pm
I’ve not been going very long but my main source is one link from a related blog which posted about mine a few days ago - that continues to be the main stream!
I’ve had a couple of googles and some randoms from wordpress tag searching. It’s quite interesting to follow though!
Hemu
May 2nd, 2008 5:54 pm
I started my blog just 10 days ago. Still now am not getting good traffic. How can i get good traffic and promote my blog. Can any one ping me on digisteps.com thank you.
Keren
May 2nd, 2008 6:04 pm
I think google still top refferal blog rank….my vote in poll its for google
Chetan
May 2nd, 2008 6:37 pm
Already voted, and again telling the order -
Search engines
Direct traffic
Other blogs
penantang
May 2nd, 2008 6:52 pm
My biggest traffic:
google/organic
digg
direct
i don’t have any traffic from stumbleupon.. I don’t know how to get traffic eventhough i’ve joined to stumbleupon..I’m still anewbie.
Anne
May 2nd, 2008 10:13 pm
Stumble provides about 60% of my traffic, followed by Google organic. Perhaps I should work harder on Google?
Dennis Ray Nestor Jr.
May 3rd, 2008 1:17 am
Google definitely supports the 80% 20% rule.
That is why we have to diversify in our niches.
In doing so we will get Google traffic afterwards.
For most of us 80% of our leads come from Google.
But less then 20% is “Quality” traffic.
I would like to see a poll on pages views (or Actions) per Traffic Source.
Bash Bosh
May 3rd, 2008 8:50 am
Really impressive results. This all proves how mighty is Google :)
Dave
May 3rd, 2008 10:02 am
I thought I would share my stats for the past 30 days from April 1 to May 1 from my blog, http://www.tailgatingideas.com
google (organic) 37.66%
(direct) ((none)) 14.34%
entrecard.com (referral) 8.14%
images.google.com (referral) 6.46%
woot.com (referral) 5.66%
Shaan
May 3rd, 2008 6:07 pm
I’m getting my traffic mostly from Google.
2nd position is of some Indian social bookmarking sites and also now i’m getting lots of direct traffic.
Regards
Shaan Haider
Harry Hoover
May 3rd, 2008 10:10 pm
StumbleUpon is by far my top traffic generator, followed by my Feedburner feed. Twitter is moving up fast.
Michael
May 3rd, 2008 10:31 pm
I think it is pretty universal that Google is the top traffic source for most blogs with direct traffic coming next (unless you are a pretty small blog and just starting out or a really big site has linked to you recently).
All this does though is make me wonder how long Google can stay on top in the search engine world. I don’t really understand why no one has been able to beat them, I guess it just comes down to the fact that Google has all those bots indexing web pages, if someone had enough money to invest I’m sure Google would get stomped but until someone spends big money on it Google is still the king.
Mark
May 4th, 2008 4:26 am
Nice to see Daren you sharing this with all the guys, so that they could have an insight that what are the sites from where they should be working on in getting the traffic.
However, for someone new it might take a longer time to get google organic ratings. But in the meantime Social Networking and Social Bookmarketing and Article/Email Marketing are available whcih if utilized effectively can do the trick.
Keep the good things comin Darren.
Abhishek Kumar
May 4th, 2008 12:06 pm
Traffic sources for http://abhisays.com
google[search] 78.00%
images.google.com 3.22%
reddit.com 1.51%
digg.com 1.23%
coollinks.indiatimes.com 1.22%
live[search] 0.86%
propeller.com 0.65%
Leon
May 4th, 2008 4:48 pm
What? No Entrecard?
BloggerDollar
May 5th, 2008 10:52 pm
I can see that organic traffic is the most important source but it is rather hard for new blogs to develop organic traffic.
Scripter
May 7th, 2008 5:48 am
This post as well as many of the comments are extremely helpful to someone fairly new to blogging. I had not previously realized how great a role Google played in driving web traffic. Thank you.
Lucy
May 19th, 2008 7:06 am
Google 59%
Yahoo 3.9%
Aol 1.22%
I suspect it might be a good idea to try to reduce dependence on Google for traffic! I’d welcome any ideas…
ArmyVet
May 28th, 2008 3:49 pm
Sadly, Google is not my #1
Graham Head
June 24th, 2008 9:05 pm
How do you get these stats? I was looking into google analytics but I am not sure its working properly. Or do you have any other software that collects this information?
I am also wondering if you could give me a few guidlines on keywords and keyword saturation? I am reading that this is the most important part of organic search engine optimistation?
Thanks for this wonderful blog, it really has some excellent information.
G
yogameditationpower
December 4th, 2008 12:58 am
I am getting lot of trafic from mail.google.com at my website http://www.yogameditationpower.com. How I can get trafic from mail.google.com.
Bell Helicopter
February 26th, 2009 11:12 pm
On one of my sites I get about 700 visitors a day.
I have 15% Direct address/ bookmark rate
40% search engines
55% referrals from other sites.
I think this should be different depending on your type of site.
rize
March 5th, 2009 4:31 pm
well my top traffic source are..
1. Google
2.SU
3.Digg
4.Entrecard
5.Yahoo Search
Well i think SU is the best traffic source beside google ..!!
Is’t it .. ?
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