The yell above can be heard around the blogosphere but I am not one of it, rest assured! 
Wayne Liew Dot Com is still doing fine and many thanks to you because you are reading. John Cow wrote “How To Measure Your Blog’s Success” which I find it interesting to blog about. After reading that post, what if you checked your stats and found that your traffic has declined? Choy!
Do you check your stats daily and yell with every rise or fall? What is the frequency of you visiting your stats counter? I don’t do it daily and you shouldn’t, unless you have invested millions into your blog. A steep drop in of the line might be due to the following reasons:
- Holidays - During holidays, your visitors normally will not have access to the Internet and thus, not visiting your blog for a particular period is a normal thing.
- Contents - This is either you are not posting for that particular day or your post for that day is not interesting. If you have been maintaining a steady amount of traffic, you should not worry and remedial action to check out what have went wrong is crucial rather than whining.
- Server Down - You might not know, during the hours that you are sleeping, that the server you host your blog with had gone down. When this happens, the traffic might drop but if your contents have the quality that it should have, people will come back. Don’t be relaxed if you host your blog with free hosts like Blogger because their server might go down just like any other site.
- Site Bug - Unexpected pop-ups from the widgets you are using might scare away your users and they might never come back. This is the reason I took away my ChatBox because it gave some lots of surprises.
Some other errors such as a PHP parsing error will stop a site load from reaching the code of your counter, this means many visits will not be counted! - Counter Down - The chances for this to happen if you are using Statcounter, SiteMeter or Google Analaytics is really low but it happens to me once (Google Analytics) last year. Try switching to one of these three if you are using others because they are really stable and they cover more information on your visitors.
If one of the above happens to you, you shouldn’t be to hysteric about the whole thing. Solve the matter and life goes on. The problems should not cause you much problems in terms of long term traffic.
What if the drop is continuous?
Start writing good contents and launch a Blog Resuscitation Programme. If you used to be there, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be there again unless you are getting a Digg effect before this. Just whine and cry for help. Imagine someone comes to you and begs you for money, will you give it to him? And if you are kind enough to give him, will you find him next time just to give your money?
There’s a lot of blogs out there and visitors have their choice of choosing when to visit and when to not. Bloggers, have this phrase in mind, “Bloggers are selfless, readers are selfish”, you can’t blame your readers.
What do you all think about this? Ever encounter a continuous fall in traffic due to unknown reasons? Share with me here, maybe I can help you out.
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October 21st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Well Wayne,
I used to check my stats daily as well. I guess that’s just a blogger’s common addiction
But I’ve since stopped doing that and tell myself to focus on doing good content.
I must comment you on the eye-catching post title. It caught mine.
October 21st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Just remember that “Nobody is indispensable”.
There is really no reason why one’s traffic can’t fluctuate or decrease continuously. Once readers find another better source, they will stop returning, simple as that.
October 21st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
@ Lawrence
Thanks.
When I started blogging long long ago I tend to panic when my traffic falls. When I panic, I noticed that things will go wrong continuously because I will become a follower in contents.
@ pelf
Technical reasons as stated above.
Maybe nobody is indispensable on what we read. We can love just one post of the entire blog of 1000 posts.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:05 pm
I was once a stataholic, felt like riding a roller coaster seeing my stats rise & fall, later decided to focus on the content, after all, content is the king
October 21st, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I’m still new to blog. I used to visit my blog stat frequently because most of my free time was invested into my blog
October 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I think content probably is king, but we all still like to check our stats, no matter what kind of blog we are running (or page, or store, or ecommerce site).
If we weren’t interested then that particular site has probably lost our own interest as well as our readers interest. Scott
October 21st, 2007 at 8:40 pm
A lot of time can be wasted going through the stats. Once you get an idea of the normal ebb and flow of traffic that all blogs go through then once every few days is good enough
October 21st, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I have seen a great increase in my traffic. Because I have been focusing on my content, and also on being active in the blogging community.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I agree with all the commentators (and almost all bloggers out there) that content is the most important thing. However, I do check my stat daily to see which method brings in the most traffic.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
I check my statcounter daily, I like to see that number rise or fall. I hope I hope many visitors come to visit me~~!!
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:47 am
I find that sometimes blogs can be like an economy; sometimes there will be a boom and occasionally there will be a recession.
During those down periods, for me it takes a few quality posts to get back the momentum and attract readers back. Then sometimes I don’t have anything extraordinary to blog about and the traffic goes down. It’s periodical for me.
I agree with the commentators here. Content is the most important thing. Don’t pay too much attention to your traffic, sometimes they are a bad indicator of how ‘hot’ is your blog currently. Be more personal in your content, so that it stands out and this will definitely attract readers.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:36 am
ummn.. this is off topic but i just want you to know that I got a tag for you lil bro. just check out my blog.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:27 am
Hi Wayne, I must admit that I check my stat counter daily. After all that’s what a blogger do. And you must put good content as well.
But then how do I know if my content is good or not. I dont care as long as it suit me and my theme and just I let others visitor gauge it. If they like your content they will stick around .
Regards
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I normally don’t worry when one day droops. As you mentioned there are many factors involved that could explain the drop. Now, if my traffic dropped for a week, or a month, I would probably begin to worry. But a day, no worries.
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
The title is catchy… as soon as I read it, for once I thought am I the only reader here?
To add to reasons for which your traffic might drop is “if you recently changed your domain…” and to add to it “Google stopped updating PR… (PR drop badly affects SERPs and thus visits) “, and if you get worried by all these, not only will your traffic drop you may tend to post less frequently…
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
@ Edward
It is true that content is King, when you start to panic, all your good contents will be gone…
Stataholic?! Nice word…
@ Mercury
You can actually do a lot of things to fill up the free time. As a blogger, I can tell you that even if you give me 50 hours, I will still say “It’s not enough to you”.
Surf around and you might learn something…
@ chipseo
Arguable but some tend to focus too much on their stats and went haywire over it. It is not that we don’t care about it, it is just that we don’t want to focus that much on it and yell whenever it rises or falls.
@ Steve Mills
I check my stats weekly but when I check, I check thoroughly in terms of referring sites, visitors’ staying period and so on. Also, I must admit that checking the stats everyday is time consuming in a way.
@ Thomas Sinfield
Congratulations on that and keep up the good work. As you can see, contents create miracles!
@ Ginn Wei
How many methods do you use? Mind to share?
@ Sean
Hmm, do you yell with every rise or fall? Contents can bring them in for you.
@ Janus
Stock market. Hmm, I think it can be related as well. There will always be a fake sign…
@ Chikai
I will give it a read and thanks for tagging!
@ Michael Liew
I know that stats can tell you a lot of things but isn’t it a distraction when we are disturbed by all the rise and fall?
@ Craig
Yes, I gained another supporter!
@ Jalaj
This is what I call the evil art of posting!
Anyway for your knowledge, this blog is not getting much Google traffic other than those searching for Ambank and EON bank credit cards, this is why I didn’t thought of it. Good point there.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
that’s why I remove my shoutbox too in this blog(the link i’m using to post here) hahaha…
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I check every 30 minutes. But traffic no good lar… You give me some hints. Thanks!!
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
yeah~~ my traffic dropped because people stopped finding Meliza Perez’s boobs images from google image search results in my blog XD that keyword actually drove hell lots of traffics lol… now it’s back to normal, meaning yeah slow moving traffic
not to mention my blog was down today too, argh
newayz, thanks for the tip! never knew about the blog resuscitation programme is possible XD
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
i do check my blog stats daily too XD dunno why, just keep checking, haha.
nolah, i wont be that panic. it’s just a measurement.
i rather more interested in how the traffic enter my site rather than those highs and lows
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:44 am
I checked my visitors also. And recently just found that actually need to count by Unique Visitors.
Mostly my visitors come from people blogs. I just wonder how I can write the keywords in my post so that google or other search engines can find. Hehe.. may need your advices on this.. write a post to teach us lol
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
i check my statistic often too.but i try to not worry too much about it.. =)
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
@ Irene
Congratulations on the launching of your “new blog” (used to be a splash page) right?
@ Kitkat
Every 30 minutes? Why? You should do other things. Check out my latest post.
@ conancat
Give your blog a mouth-to-mouth one, it will develop a special kind of feeling towards you.
You should check with your host about the down time. I got very less search engine traffic, most of them are from referring blogs.
@ jayhan
It’s good to think like that. But, will you scream if your traffic suddenly soared to 10,000 uniques a day because of Digg or something?
@ keeyit
I will write on it soon but I am working on the SEO for my blog as well.
@ cbenc12
Be calm about it. Everything is going to be alright!
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:12 pm
@ Wayne Liew
I’m using social media, forums and websites to get the traffic because I think these can provide the targeted visitors that I want in my niche. In other words, I’m trying to attract them to my blog of similar topic. Their total user base is more than 200 000. Currently, my blog is 4-week old and gets about 180 visitors daily. Still pales in comparison to this blog…
@ conancat
Sex always sells…
Like jayhan, I’m checking it daily because I want to know more about the referrals. Beside, Statcounter only stores the last 500 entries for free account.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Entertainment is actually a good but not really being tapped by others. I foresee a good future in this niche (not just me). Maybe you should try using Google Analytics then for your counter usage but it is invisible to your vistors though.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Checking stats daily is NOT what bloggers do.
Checking stats daily is what everyone who’s concerned over their website traffic do.
Just do your best when it comes to content. Remember that content IS the factor that keeps people re-visiting.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:01 am
try to keep up the traffic….
October 24th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I am a blogger and I am concern about my traffic. What to do?
October 24th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
@goldfries
Checking stats is something that growing blogs need to do… Grown-up blogs already have a large reader-base and blogger have to keep them returning. New blogs die out in absence of traffic… checking stats boosts or lowers morale. So you can say if you are loosing traffic don’t watch stats to keep away from getting disheartened.
It all depends on whether you are marketing your blog or not… Big bloggers as problogger arrange competitions/giveaways… why?
October 25th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I know one blogger who didn’t do much marketing and got up with just great and powerful contents. Did you heard of DoshDosh?
October 26th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Yea..i check my stat daily and that’s the first thing i do when im connected.
I just can’t help it.. I’l happy if my visitors increase and not-so-happy when it is dropping.
Currenty it is dropping!!! What should I do??
Before that, my average visitors is high and my average page view is so-so but now, my average visitors has dropped but my average page view increases.
Should i be happy or sad??
October 26th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
You always look at your visitors as it is the one that people count your traffic. There might be different factors leading to the example you gave me. It may be due to bad navigation, making people surfing all over your site to find for something or maybe your site is too sticky and your visitors don’t want to leave.
It is up to you to percept it. One golden principle, if you constantly produce good contents, you will not be worried about your stats that much.
October 27th, 2007 at 2:54 am
@ Wayne Liew
Does Google Analytics has all the features of StatCounter? I don’t mind it being invisible because I prefer to keep it as my own statistics rather than showing it to the visitors.
Off-topic: How do you made the MyBlogLog widget showing as a bunch of recent readers rather than a few readers with names beside them?
October 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Google Analytics give you all the information of your visitors, Statcounter gives you only the recent 500 but Statcounter is real-time, Google Analytics is one day late.
Choose don’t display name, display pic half size. It will do the magic then…
October 31st, 2007 at 3:00 am
Thanks for the tip. It’s working as I want now.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Congratulations. Just ask me anything any time.