An interesting comparison would be to how many visitors <a href="http://caml.inria.fr">caml.inria.fr</a> used to get vs what <a href="http://ocaml.org">ocaml.org</a> is getting. The Inria site has statistics somewhere, but I can't find them now.<div>
<br></div><div>Amir, Sylvain, do you have access to the ocamlwebsite account? How are you seeing the statistics otherwise? It might be good for us to make the analytics public, if google allows that.</div><div><br></div>
<div>
The configuration also still refers to <a href="http://ocaml-lang.org">ocaml-lang.org</a>. I'll see if that can be updated.</div><div><br></div><div>-Ashish</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Sylvain Le Gall <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sylvain@le-gall.net" target="_blank">sylvain@le-gall.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">2013/1/19 Amir Chaudhry <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amc79@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">amc79@cam.ac.uk</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><br>
On 19 Jan 2013, at 09:43, Sylvain Le Gall <<a href="mailto:sylvain@le-gall.net" target="_blank">sylvain@le-gall.net</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> 2013/1/18 Amir Chaudhry <<a href="mailto:amc79@cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">amc79@cam.ac.uk</a>><br>
>> I'd be wary of drawing too many conclusion from this just yet. There's no testing going on regarding intent so those could be anything from casual drive-by visitors to hard-core users. All we can say is that 1/3rd of visitors to the <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> site are using Windows.<br>
><br>
> Well, guessing intent from stats is kind of hard. I mean, you CANNOT do that even after a long period of time. All these are just clues, you must make guess on the stats.<br>
><br>
> I would be deeply surprised that we got a lot of "drive-by visitors"... You cannot really end up on the front page of <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> just as you will end-up on a Facebook page. The <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> website doesn't really have catch all words/sentences.<br>
<br>
</div>Perhaps I shouldn't call them 'drive-by', so how about 'first-time, unique'? I didn't mean to suggest these are people who got there by accident, but that they were simply 'having a quick look'. ~60% of the words that people put into google before arriving at the site are unknown to us ("Keyword not provided") so we don't necessarily know how people find their way there.<br>
<br>
Aside: I did some searching about this and found a blog post that was enlightening: <a href="http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3798-Google-Analytics-Overcoming-Not-Provided-Keywords" target="_blank">http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3798-Google-Analytics-Overcoming-Not-Provided-Keywords</a><br>
<div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>OK, on "first time, unique" (better than drive-by in my mind). Although, I would consider them as the target of of <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> (i.e. a way to publicize more OCaml). So having a lot of "first time, unique" is a good thing.</div>
<div class="im">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
>> Also bear in mind that stats like this might be skewed by population size. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are a lot of US visitors. Having said that, I don't know what Google Analytics does in the background to mitigate this (if at all).<br>
><br>
</div>> What do you want to mitigate ? If there are a lot of US visitors, you won't divide the number of US visitors…<br>
<br>
I don't want to mitigate. I wasn't sure if we're seeing the raw numbers or the numbers after some behind-the-scenes google manipulations (which I doubt in this case). See also search trends [1], which indicates that over the last 90 days, France is doing the most searching for 'OCaml'. I've no idea how google works this out and whether they account for overall search volume somehow.<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ocaml" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ocaml</a><br>
<div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Why Google would change any numbers?</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, I can tell you that some stuff are filtered out:</div><div>- browser without JavaScript</div>
<div>- robots</div><div><br></div><div>But, you expect this people to be filtered out.</div><div><br></div><div>Concerning France, I 100% agree on the fact that there is a problem here. I don't have any clear explanation/hyptothesis on this topic.</div>
<div class="im">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
><br>
>> Anecdote: One of the things a startup friend told me is that when your browser visits start matching the ratio of overall browser market share, then you can consider yourself as breaking out of the 'echo-chamber'. This used to mean going from Firefox-heavy traffic to IE-heavy traffic (Chrome may have changed things since then).<br>
><br>
> That probably stands for general purpose web sites -- which is not the case of <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a>.<br>
<br>
</div>Why shouldn't a programming language website (ultimately) have a broad set of visitors? You've already pointed out the large number of Windows visitors so I don't think it's a stretch to consider this a general purpose website (in time). Those figures are related to the OSes people browse from, which are not necessarily where they do their OCaml hacking.<br>
<br>
I'd be curious to know what the figures look like for Haskell.org (I've sent an email so will let folks know if/when I hear back).<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div>;-) </div><div><br></div>
<div>
That a nice wish. Let see what are the haskell number.</div><div class="im"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><br>
> I would say that what is important is the number of abandonment ("sorties" in french) from the root page. In the case of "<a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a>", 34% abandon from /, 21% goes to install, 14% goes to taste.html... I guess it shows that we have a lot of people interested enough to discover how to install OCaml... I think there is a clear intent to discover the OCaml language when going to <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a>.<br>
<br>
</div>Curious to know where you're looking for these figures. I can see different pages that state 34% exit rate from root and also 54% exit rate from root. I don't see the ones that indicate e.g "21% go to install" so where should I be looking?<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Here:</div><div><a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=fr&pli=1#report/content-pages/a22552764w54925729p55893860/%3F_r.tabId%3Dnavigationsummary/" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=fr&pli=1#report/content-pages/a22552764w54925729p55893860/%3F_r.tabId%3Dnavigationsummary/</a><br>
</div><div><br></div><div>Contenu -> Toutes les pages -> Recapitulatif de navigation </div><div><br></div><div>There is an even better way to see it, but there is a problem that should be fixed about the account configuration:</div>
<div><a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=fr&pli=1#report/inpage/a22552764w54925729p55893860/" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=fr&pli=1#report/inpage/a22552764w54925729p55893860/</a><br>
</div><div class="im"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
Journeys from the root page are useful but be wary of how we interpret them. e.g if it's a great page and 90% of the visitors find exactly the information they wanted and _leave_ then we have an exit rate of 90%. If the page is terrible and 90% of people are frustrated and leave we _still_ have an exit rate of 90%. It's a silly example but I hope it makes the point.<br>
<br>
We should also expect people to land directly on pages from search results (not every journey starts from root). "OCaml Install" as a search term has 3 INRIA pages and <a href="http://ocaml.org/install" target="_blank">ocaml.org/install</a> as 4th. "ocaml tutorial" sends me to <a href="http://mirror.ocaml.org" target="_blank">mirror.ocaml.org</a> (top result), with <a href="http://ocaml.org/tutorial" target="_blank">ocaml.org/tutorial</a> as 3rd. As more content is tweaked and back-links created, I expect the relevant <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> pages to rank higher. My point is that landing pages are just as important as how people navigate the site and (imho) the search terms are more indicative of what people were looking for.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>I am not sure to understand what you expect but I am pretty sure you won't find the answer to questions like "exit rate is high because people find the info" or "exit rate is high because people don't like the page" in the stats. You can run a poll, but you'll have another bias in the population that reply. </div>
<div><br></div><div>So whatever, a high rank in Google is by itself an achievement and the number of people that visit the site is high. This is good and I think the <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> team is achieving its goal.</div>
<div><div class="h5">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
Best wishes,<br>
<div><div>Amir<br>
<br>
<br>
><br>
> On 18 Jan 2013, at 17:37, Sylvain Le Gall <<a href="mailto:sylvain@le-gall.net" target="_blank">sylvain@le-gall.net</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> > Just had a quick look at the stats, and there are some surprises....<br>
> ><br>
> > Top OS: Windows (33%), then Linux and Mac...<br>
> > Top social referrer: Twitter, then Stack Overflow and G+.<br>
> > Country: US (27%), France (12%)<br>
> ><br>
> > Here are the fact I am surprised about:<br>
> > - people seems to think that the OCaml community is UNIX centric... seems to be not that true (at least 1/3 are not using UNIX based system)<br>
> > - I was expecting to see reddit in the top social referrer and G+ far below.... this is not the case<br>
> > - I was expecting to see at least France in top position here.<br>
> ><br>
> > Overall I am surprised by this stats. I think we should take another look in 6 months.<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > 2013/1/18 Sylvain Le Gall <<a href="mailto:sylvain@le-gall.net" target="_blank">sylvain@le-gall.net</a>><br>
> > BTW, I am planning to setup analytics as well to forge.(SOON TO BE).<a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> and <a href="http://planet.ocaml.org" target="_blank">planet.ocaml.org</a>, maybe it makes sense to have all this stats in one place (i.e. the analytics account where <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> is already hosted).<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > 2013/1/18 Thomas Gazagnaire <<a href="mailto:thomas.gazagnaire@gmail.com" target="_blank">thomas.gazagnaire@gmail.com</a>><br>
> > > Comes up 2nd for me, right after the wikipedia page (3rd if you count the Jane Street add at the top).<br>
> > > 4th-7th are INRIA sites, 8th is Jane Street's OCaml page, 9th is the OCaml Labs homepage and 10th is Planet OCaml.<br>
> > ><br>
> > > Also, <a href="http://google.com" target="_blank">google.com</a> redirects me to <a href="http://google.co.uk" target="_blank">google.co.uk</a> (seems I can't choose anymore).<br>
> > ><br>
> > > Traffic stats would be interesting but even more so would be how people currently find their way to <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> and which pages they land on. I'm curious to know the ratio of direct visits (typing <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> into the browser) vs people who follow links. Of those that follow links, who are the referrers.<br>
> ><br>
> > We have set-up google analytics for <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a>, I'm happy to give access to the stats to anyone interested (I don't know if it's easy to export the data).<br>
> ><br>
> > Thomas<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> > ><br>
> > > ac<br>
> > ><br>
> > > On 18 Jan 2013, at 15:26, Sylvain Le Gall <<a href="mailto:sylvain@le-gall.net" target="_blank">sylvain@le-gall.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> > ><br>
> > >> Hi,<br>
> > >><br>
> > >> Just want to drop a mail to say that <a href="http://ocaml.org" target="_blank">ocaml.org</a> is now on first page<br>
> > >> <a href="http://www.google.com/#q=ocaml" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/#q=ocaml</a><br>
> > >><br>
> > >> It is the 4th entry after <a href="http://caml.inria.fr" target="_blank">caml.inria.fr</a> and wikipedia.<br>
> > >><br>
> > >> This is VERY good (never achieved this with the forge). It is the same for bing.<br>
> > >><br>
> > >> Ashish do you have some Google Analytics setup to track the number of visitors ? I would be very interested to see the traffic.<br>
> > >><br>
> > >> Regards<br>
> > >> Sylvain<br>
> > >> _______________________________________________<br>
> > >> Infrastructure mailing list<br>
> > >> <a href="mailto:Infrastructure@lists.ocaml.org" target="_blank">Infrastructure@lists.ocaml.org</a><br>
> > >> <a href="http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/infrastructure" target="_blank">http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/infrastructure</a><br>
> > ><br>
> > > _______________________________________________<br>
> > > Infrastructure mailing list<br>
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> ><br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
><br>
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