Occam's Razor Applied - Or Why Is My Blog Traffic and Ad Impression/Pageview Count Down?
Occam's Razor is the concept that, often, the simplest answer for a situation is usually the correct one, and that complex reasons are usually unnecessary. I used to be the sort of personality that would constantly hunt for complex answers and reasons when things went awry. In fact, I spent many years intentionally trying to refute that Occam's Razor truly applied to real life. Eventually, after years of observation, I've found that the simplest answer is in fact usually is the right one.
What's this have to do with blogging? Just this: Many bloggers and website publishers log onto to forums and get frantic when traffic, adsense clickthrough rate, and ad revenue seems to be out of sorts in the short term. Occam's Razor says that there's a simple explanation for this, whether you find the actual answer or not. It might be a holiday in some countries, a time of traditional festivals, or some big movie or sporting event might be taking place that has captured national attention.
Whatever the reason, the answer is usually nothing too complicated or conspiratorial. It's times like this when I turn to my math geek skills and determine how traffic is in both short-term (7, 14, and 28 days) and long-term averages (56 and 112 days). If my charts show that short-term average traffic is down but long-term average traffic is up - or at least steady - I don't worry about it. If both are up, even better, obviously.
If the traffic averages for all sliding windows, long and short, are down, I might do an additional sliding window average of 224 days (32 weeks) and 364 days (52 weeks). If these latter moving averages are also down, then I worry. But ultimately, all you really can do is write and post more optimized content and hope for the best. Or choose a different topic to write about :D.
(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.blogspot.com
What's this have to do with blogging? Just this: Many bloggers and website publishers log onto to forums and get frantic when traffic, adsense clickthrough rate, and ad revenue seems to be out of sorts in the short term. Occam's Razor says that there's a simple explanation for this, whether you find the actual answer or not. It might be a holiday in some countries, a time of traditional festivals, or some big movie or sporting event might be taking place that has captured national attention.
Whatever the reason, the answer is usually nothing too complicated or conspiratorial. It's times like this when I turn to my math geek skills and determine how traffic is in both short-term (7, 14, and 28 days) and long-term averages (56 and 112 days). If my charts show that short-term average traffic is down but long-term average traffic is up - or at least steady - I don't worry about it. If both are up, even better, obviously.
If the traffic averages for all sliding windows, long and short, are down, I might do an additional sliding window average of 224 days (32 weeks) and 364 days (52 weeks). If these latter moving averages are also down, then I worry. But ultimately, all you really can do is write and post more optimized content and hope for the best. Or choose a different topic to write about :D.
(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.blogspot.com
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