Tuesday, September 1, 2009

How 2 Backtrack (with Blogger)...?

I get confused every once in a while, when I notice a spike in my readership, and try and figure out who linked to me. Sometimes it's obvious, or one of the 'big' blogs that I read anyway. Sometimes it's a random blip by Massively that sends my daily visits through the roof for one day, and then I just go over there and kinda slog through three days worth of stuff to figure out why they linked me. It turns out someone at Massively recently mentioned "WoW Tourist" in passing, and linked to my story where I call Sycaine a douchebag in my own defense, after he went off on me for being a WoW Carebear.

In Google Analytic's Dashboard, I can see that a recent surge in traffic was the result of following a link from Massively, but not which link. I also know Wordpress offers this functionality built in. You recieve something called a backtrack when someone links to a story. It shows up as a comment in the story itself, with a snippet of the sentnce that contains said link to said story.

I don't REALLY care about this, and won't cry myself to sleep over it, but sometimes I get a spike, and wonder "huh.... wtf happened on tuesday?". I don't really pore over traffic patterns or anything ridiculous, but have noticed a lot of random emails showing up in my inbox asking if I'd like to sell people adspace, and wonder why it's happening now, when it never really happened before. It's all very mysterious.

Anyway... does anyone with a blogger setup know of any widgets or code I can mash into my site layout to get this going, or does it require a rehosting of ixobelle.com on another frontend to achieve?

I have my layout ironed out in a way I like, so probably won't be making any sweeping changes anytime soon. However! I've also been doing illustration stuff with my father recently, and have maybe convinced him to do a sweet piece of ixobelle art for the front page, which could easily become a new layout project depending on how it turns out.

2 comments:

Mordicieus said...

Well you are right in that Syncaine is often a douchebag. :-P

Melaisis said...

Hey Ixo. Long time reader and Blogger.com user here. There should be an option in Analytics to at least show you a URL as to where you're being linked from. Try clicking on the domain names linking you (for example Massively.com) in 'Traffic Sources'. Fiddle around with the stuff in there and you should get a direct page. However, if they link you off their front page (but say, in separate blog posts) then it'll simply register as hits from the front page.

I've noticed several Blogger sites have a 'Links To This Post' option at the bottom of posts which automatically update whenever they detect a link to you (scroll down on http://ramraider.blogspot.com/2009/08/price-is-shite-starring-gillen-taurus.html for an example). However, I think this is unavailable to custom layouts. :/