Statistics Explained
It seems that this blog is getting some national (USA) attention from some very interesting sources. There have been several questions about the statistics I post in the Newsletter preview here. I thought I would go ahead and take a few minutes to explain a little bit about the more important ones.
Rating Points
The rating points are the actual points gathered when the Traffic Exchanges are compared to one another. There are about 30 different categories this rating system is based on. Each Traffic Exchange is given a point value depending on its performance in each category.
For example, Traffic Exchange X has delivered 90% of the hits it should have. Traffic Exchange Y has delivered 50% of the hits it should have delivered. And, Traffic Exchange Z has delivered 75% of the hits. In this instance, Traffic Exchange X is the best and Traffic Exchange Y is the worst performer. The point values would go like this:
Traffic Exchange X = 3 Points
Traffic Exchange Z = 2 Points
Traffic Exchange Y = 1 Point
In this simple example you can see that Traffic Exchange X has outperformed all and is in the lead. If Traffic Exchange X outperforms the others in the rest of the categories it will naturally have the most rating points when the newsletter goes out.
Hits Per Click
When I mention Hits Per Click in the Newsletter I am referring to the actual Hits Per Click (or Full-Page Ad I View) ratio I have recorded. Each time I click to view the next web site in a Traffic Exchange my client side software records one click. When the Newsletter goes out my client side software will figure out how many hits per click was returned since the last newsletter. Hits per click are one of the categories used for ranking purposes.
It is noteworthy to point out the Traffic Exchanges that have a true auto-assignment of Page-view credits do perform better in this category and generally speaking overall. I am managing well over 100 Traffic Exchange accounts and it is impossible for me to log into each one daily to assign credits to sites. So, what I do is log in every fourth day to assign credits if the Traffic Exchange didn’t assign them.
Unique Hit Percentage For Last 300 Hits, Unique Hit Percentage For Last 750 Hits, Unique Hit Percentage For Last 1000 Hits
The Last 300, 750, and 1000 Unique Hit percentage mainly show how a Traffic Exchange is managing your Page-View credits. Many Traffic Exchanges tout high membership numbers to entice the member into thinking that there will be a lot of people looking at your advertisement. With many Traffic Exchanges this does not hold true. After all, isn’t the reason why we use traffic exchanges because we want a wide variety of people looking at our web pages?
If a Traffic Exchange says they have 5, 10, 20, or even 30 thousand or more members and the exchange says these members are active, the 300, 750, and 1000 Unique Hit Percent values should go through the roof! I mean, how hard could it be to have 5000 active members looking at one URL if the URL has Page-View credits assigned to it? Maybe it is harder than I think… Maybe the actual activity level in some traffic exchanges is not as large as some may advertise… Something to think about.
Unique Hit Percentage Since Last Newsletter
Just like the others listed above this is a value used to determine how well a traffic exchange is managing Page-View credits since the last time the Newsletter has been sent out. This value is also used as a part of determining how many Page-Views should be done in a session and as part of the limit when considering the total number of Page-Views to be looked at in-between newsletter issues. See Below.
Overall Unique Hit Percent
What I do here is combine the last “Unique Hit Percentage Since Last Newsletter” value and the current value and divide by two. This gives the reader a consistent visual on the way a traffic exchange is managing his or her Page-View credits. All traffic exchange added to the testing routine start off with a 100% value. This is one of the reasons why some new exchange will jump up on the ranking list when first added and then settle down as time goes by.
Recomended Number Of Pageviews Per Surf Session
With over 100 traffic exchanges being tested at this time there is no way I can view, say, 300 pages in each of them in-between newsletter issues. That is just to much to do in four days and some of the page views are a waste of time if the Traffic Exchange is not performing well enough.
So, what I do is come up with this value based on the traffic exchange past performance as compared to the other exchanges being tested. It is geared towards getting the most number of people looking at my web pages in all the exchanges, not just a select few.
In this instance, a session consists of looking at around 1300 web pages. I have found that 1300 is a reasonable number to keep the time spent viewing web pages at a manageable amount. If you have ever used a traffic exchange you know what I mean. Sometimes it can be brutal! With 1300 Page-Views the time don’t seem to go by that long. A couple of hours is all.
The least number of Page-Views I will look at in a traffic exchange is 10. Depending on the number of traffic exchanges, the most can be around 25. New Traffic exchanges have a preset 25 Page-View session so I can accumulate a couple of Page-View credits there.
When I’m really in the mood to look at web sites I will do double or even triple sessions back, to back.
I hope this sheds some light on the Traffic Exchange Exposed ranking system. I further hope that the information you gather here along with other venues help you to make the right decisions about where you should be spending your time in traffic exchanges.
Take Care,
Phil
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