Despite being late to the analytics game, Blogger has recently unveiled live stats for BlogSpot fans in order to help their users attain a greater grasp of where their traffic is coming from.
Although some of you use Google Analytics or other third party tools to track your blog traffic, many of you have requested an easier-to-use, fully-integrated stats feature for Blogger. We heard that, and we are excited to announce that Blogger in Draft now has built-in stats. Just go to Blogger in Draft, and you’ll notice a new “Stats” tab. You don’t have to install or configure anything to start benefitting [sic] from Stats.
The coolest thing about the new Blogger Stats is that it monitors and analyzes your visitor traffic in near-real-time. You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now. (Blogger In Draft)
This latest feature should help put the world’s most popular blogging service on par with WordPress, who also boasts an internal stats service known as WordPress Stats.
Although both WordPress Stats and Blogger Stats have many similarities, there are a few key differences that separate the two services from each other (which might surprise users of both services).
Stats By The Minute
Although WordPress does an excellent job at showcasing your traffic on a day by day basis, Blogger goes one step further by highlighting your traffic by the minute.
This data can be useful to discover peak traffic throughout the day, which can help a BlogSpot devotee determine the best times to blog (at least as far as their readers are concerned).
Global Stats Galore?
Although both WordPress Stats and Blogger Live Stats highlight your daily totals, top referring sites, SEO keywords, etc., Blogger goes one step further by showcasing a map of where your traffic is coming from (down to the country!!)
This can be very helpful for BlogSpot owners, as it can help them identify regional strong holds from around the world (data which could be used to attract advertisers from specific nations).
Browser And OS Data
Unlike WordPress Stats, Blogger Live Stats informs BlogSpot loyalists on which browsers are popular upon their sites, which can help them design and optimize their Blogger layouts accordingly reducing the “browser doesn’t work in IE/Chrome/Firefox” complaints via inbox.
Blogger Live Stats also informs BlogSpot fans on which OS’s are popular on their site, although this feature is really only useful if one is receive a lot of traffic from Android or iOS mobile devices (as it may inspire one to create a mobile friendly site).
There’s An App For That!
Despite lacking superior features to its “orange B” rival, WordPress does have one advantage in the fact that users can view their blog’s stats upon their iPhone (via third party) or Blackberry device, with support for Android smart phones coming in the future.
Even though Blogger Live Stats is still in beta, it is doubtful that Google will ever release a native stats app for Blogger fans (although we may see one appear via third party).
Conclusion
Despite the fact that WordPress Stats provides basic analytical data for the WP faithful, their stats package looks (surprisingly) meager when compared against Blogger’s Live Stats.
Unfortunately WordPress.com does not allow users to use third party tools (like Google Analytics) to make up for the lack of features.
Hopefully the WP team upgrades their stats package soon lest they cede the analytical crown to BlogSpot when Blogger Live Stats is rolled out to the Google loving masses.
Update: Corrected a grammatical error within the article.
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