I have you in my sites

And now for something completely different.

I have a question- something vaguely off topic which I have wanted to know for ages, but I could never really find the right moment to bring it up. Thing is, I suspect it might be quite a stupid thing to ask. But then, when you don't know the answer to something, it's often quite easy to assume that everyone else in the universe has the understanding and knowledge that you do not- when in fact they too are sitting home scratching their heads over precisely the same little mystery, and wishing like hell somebody else would pipe up and ask.

My question relates to my Site Meter. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's basically a hit counter that tells you how many people are visiting your site per day. If you blog, and don't have a site meter, then run run run as fast your little fingers will carry you to sign up for one! Here is a helpful guide to get you started.

Bloggers love site meters. Because not only does the counter tell you how many site hits you receive, but it tells you when, and for how long. Plus, you also find out all manner of other gripping little factoids you would never otherwise have known. For example, you can see not only from which countries do your visitors hail, but from which particular cities or towns or lifeboats. You learn what times of day are the busiest for web traffic. You discover how people are coming to you and sometimes what led them there - from Google, from another blog link, from the depths of hell. If you ask it nicely, the site meter site will give you little charts and graphs and forecasts for you to pore over in amused fascination.

It's almost like a blog ultrasound, only without the cold lubricant and the monkeys. And if you look at it long enough, or often enough, or even occasionally out of boredom or passing interest, the site meter can tell you something about the life and pulse of your blog. Best of all, it's deliciously free. Freeeee!

Anyway, what I have always wondered about this: There's a site meter log which records the duration of each visit. So, for example, I can see that in the last hour, there were 13 hits, and that Betty Smith from Pocatello, Idaho logged on at 3.15 pm and looked at 3 different pages within the site for 4.36 minutes.

Ha. Don't worry, Betty, I was kidding. It doesn't give me your name or anything else about you personally. But I do get the rest of that information.

Here's the thing, though - who are the people who visit for 0.00 seconds? I always have lots of these in the records. At first I thought the meter could only pick up hits if the visitor stayed for a certain length of time- like for more than 10 seconds. But then I looked back through the log a bit, and found visits that lasted, say, 4 seconds. Which threw that theory out the window.

I'm not really bothered or worried about this odd, repetitive non-event. I am curious, though. My confusion is twofold- first, if the visit is really lasting only 0.00 seconds, how the hell does the site meter pick that up? Is it just really, really alert and on the ball?

Secondly, and more crucially, how does anyone make up their mind about my site in 0.00 seconds? This causes me continual, gentle bafflement. I mean, I'm capable of some mighty snap decisions- for example, "No, I won't go to the gym tonight but instead will collapse like a beached baby seal on my sofa in front of the TV while nibbling something yummy." And I'm completely down with getting your groove on with some free-flowing web surfing, click click click. But even I usually take more than 0.00 seconds to ascertain if the web site I am on is someplace I want to be.

So what the hell is going on with the old 0.00? Is it only happening to me, or does everyone get these insta-drive bys? Does anyone know the answer?

Comments

[Hall]

Hi, do you think they could be folks like me, checking to see if you have written anything new? It doesn't take long at all to recognize a previously read article and keep on clicking down the list of blog bookmarks. Whenever I want to goof off, I start at the top of my list of blogs and click down... I'm sure I'm good for a half dozen clicks per day. Sorry if it bugs... thanks for your great writing!

[bj]

Are these robots? I'd like to know the answer. Tell us all when you find out. I'm guessing that they are robots trolling pages for changes, and they are able to check for changes quickly and move on, or gather up your site list.

But, does sitemeter exclude these kinds of scans?

bj

[Amocca]

Personally i think they are bots - constantsly searching.... the second I update my blog with new entries I instantly have between 1 and 5 spam messages....

I reckon that's what they are bots checking for updates, if none has happened they hop along v quickly

[DD]

I have a fairly new blog and am still tweaking it here and there and one of things I had wanted to do is have a counter. You have answered my question. In turn, I have found the answer to yours:

"Why do some of my visitors have visit lengths of 0:00?

That means the visitors are only staying to view a single page and then leaving. The only way that Site Meter knows how long someone is on a site is by the times of each page view. If they only look at a single page and then leave, we don't know how long they looked at the page. If they looked at two pages and left we would know they at least were on the site during the time of the first page view and the second page view. The difference between those two times would be the length of the visit."

[courtney]

Hi, I used to read your blog and checked back in today for the first time in months. I wanted to chime in and say sometimes I use people's blogrolls to check out other blogs I like. For example, I use Moxie's blogroll to get to Raising Weg, Indigo Girl, and Peter's Cross Station. I use Figlet's blogroll to read all the killer ladybug's blogs. If I want to read a certain blog, it's easier for me to get bring up Moxie's blog quickly and then quickly click the link I want. That way I don't have to bookmark all my blogs. Make sense?

[Erin]

Are the urls for the 0.0 second visits to your RSS feeds?

[Dead Bug]

I was about to answer the question but DD has already done a fine job of that. I wondered about it casually for a year before I finally dug up an answer. Glad to know I'm not the only one who's wondered.

--Bugs

[Boulder]

Probably someone like me (hello!) reading via bloglines - bloglines polls for an update, sees one & then pulls it in for me.

[Jessica]

Some of them might be users like me; I open all the blogs I read in tabs (since there are 46 of them it takes a while for them all to load), then I click through them to see if they've been updated. Plus I mostly use rss feeds (only some sites' rss feeds don't work, hence the occasional tabbed-browsing party--Firefox has a feature whereby it will open all the sites in a folder of favorites each in its own tab; it's marvelous)

[B. Mare]

DOH! DD, you are absolutely right. The answer was in the Site Meter help pages all along, and I never thought to look there. Isn't that funny? Here I was thinking it was peculiar surfing technique, and instead it was something so simple.

Hurrah! Well, that's a tiny weight off my mind.

[MsPrufrock]

Thank God that is cleared up, I've been wondering about it for ages.

The other site traffic-related question I have is this-why do people that search for relevant subjects to my blog, ie "PCOS + infertility", yet they don't stay for more than a few seconds? I want to tell them, "Hey, lots of funny and interesting things here about that!" Seriously, why search for it, click on a link that is obviously a blog, and then leave after reading a sentence or two? Idiots.

[instamom]

for all of you have bookmarks of all the blogs you read, a friend of mine recommended bloglines.com. way easier! insted of bookmarking the 100s(?) of blogs we read, we can just go to bloglines and type in the addresses of our favorite bloggers. then, every time you go to bloglines, the site will check for new updates and highlight the updated blog names in our list. no need to check each one manually. way cool!

[Anna H.]

One thing I do is not only check very quickly for a new post by the blogger, but also to see if there are any new comments, since I love reading the comments too. So, often I click onto a site for a second or two, just long enought to scroll down to see the comment number.

And then I'm sure that every IF blogger thinks that they have a stalker in Los Angeles, because I very often open blogs on multiple tabs (I love you, Firefox), but then walk away and do other things for a while; so I'm sure there are stats that show I stayed on your first page here, reading it over and over for 8 hours and 26 minutes...

xxoo

[Amyesq]

Ahhh! Good answers to questions I also had! Like you, Mare, I thought *sob* how could they decide in 0.00 seconds that they didn't like my blog? Now I get it. AND I learned that some peeps like Courtney up above are all about us Killer Ladybugs. Feelin' kinda special.

Oh and speaking of site monitors, how crazy is this? I got an email this morning from my little sister's very best friend since she was ten saying "Oh my God you didn't know this but we have been trying to get PG for the last six months and I googled fertility monitors and blah blah led me to Emily's blog and blah blah and holy shit you have a blog!"

Small, scary small world.

[ericalil]

Hi, it's me! I'm one of the drive-bys. If I've read your post already, and I'm checking to see if there's a new post, I have you in my favorites and I go from one blog to the next, compulsively.

I know I've commented on your blog in the past, and please forgive me for lurking and not posting since then. I'm an infertile women, been thru hell, and reading blogs and posting on IVFC are my form of therapy.

I'm just here in the background (in Fairfax, VA, USA) rooting you all on!

erica

[JennaM]

Help me! Can someone come to my house, help me get a site meter, help me get on bloglines (or whatever the idiom is when you can get emails that update you when someone you like has a new post), teach me how to use graphics and pictures, get me pregnant, help my sister, fix my hair, and walk my dogs in this god-awful neverending torrential downpour we're having in NE this month???

[Julianna]

I'll be damned! I just went to my meter and did indeed see that all those 0.00 visitors had 1 page next to their little zeros.

I did notice an amazing feat just a few minutes ago, someone viewed 5 pages on my blog in .23 seconds......I don't even know if I could click 5 pages that fast!

Thanks for asking the question.

I hope you are well, thinking of you,

[thalia]

I hate you. I signed up for sitemeter after I read this, and now I'm obsessed by how many ppl visit and don't comment. Including someone who today has read through every post I've ever written. it took them nearly 3 hours. Still no comment. Isn't that a little rude? Aren't comments a bit like a toll? No? Did I get the instructions wrong?

[Lisa P.]

In response to what Thalia just said: I'm a lurker most of the time, I'm sorry to say. (Although I did comment on Thalia's blog once!) Partially because I don't want to appear stupid, or as though I'm equating what I've been through (two early losses in one year, relatively small in the grand scheme of IF/loss experiences) with what so many of you have been through. And sharing a comment opens my blog up for inspection, which makes me wonder if I'll then get a bunch more 0 second visitors, myself.

But I am in awe of so many of the writers I've found and the strength that you exude.

[zhl]

Oh no, now I've got something else to obsess over.

[Lisa]

I'm new to blogging so thanks for the info on how to get a site meter. I love it!