Not long ago Google unveiled it’s free website analytics package, aptly titled Google Analytics. It’s been all over the internet news wire, so it was no real surprise when new signups were shut down due to the sheer volume of accounts being setup. I was fortunate enough to sign up the HSB on day 1 and for the past 2 weeks I’ve been gathering all sorts of interesting data. And I’m not even using it to its full potential.

You see, if I was trusting enough to allow Google access to the SNS ecom. data, I could go as far as to track ROI by ad type, determine overall keyword conversion and all other sorts of bells and whistles. But for now I’m content with just using the basics of the tool for HSB. After all this blog does no paid advertising and does not sell anything (although we do push the sauce).

So now you know all about what I don’t do with Google Analytics, let’s get into what I am doing with it. Or at least what I’m finding out from it.

Daily Visitors & Page Views

You can see from the graph above that HSB receives 2,000 unique visitors (on average) a day. In the image below, you can see that 21% of those visitors are returnees & 78% are newbs. That means at least 400 people return to HotSauceBlog.com on a daily basis .From the visitor recency graph (not pictured) you can see how many days between each return visit. Most returns happen on the same or next day, but there is also a spike on the recency graph 14 days out. So that means the visitors to HSB just keep coming back!

Geo Map Overlay
Alright, so now we know that HSB has lots of new visitors and repeat visitors, but where are all these people coming from?

Geo Map Overlay
The geo map overlay may just be my favorite tool of all, not because it’s particularly useful, but it’s just fun to see where all the visitors are coming from. In the graph above, you can see that the HSB is quite popular with the European crowd, but I certainly didn’t expect to see any visits from Africa, China & the Soviet Union.

Keyword Referrers
Now here’s where we get down to the nitty gritty of website traffic. I mentioned before that the HSB does not do any paid advertising, so how are people finding the blog? Good question.

The top referrer is of course Google, but it’s followed closely by direct visits (those typing in HotSauceBlog.com or bookmarks) then Yahoo!, MSN & AOL. Out of the top 10 referrering sources, the top 10 weirdest search terms used to find the HSB are:

• Rachel ray
• Hot wife blog
• Rachel ray hot
• chunky peanut cookies
• hot chick blog
• 18 and hot
• hot burning greetings
• wasabi seeds
• fake crab stomach problems (food poisoning anyone?)
• hot sauce diet

There are some weird people out there and I made sure to only post the G-rated terms!

So what the heck is the point of this post? Well, I was recently asked about the traffic levels for the blog & I also wanted to make sure that all the viewers (both makers & sellers) are aware of this exceptional free stats package. Hell, it’s free – give it a whirl. It’s also super easy to install.