Very interesting study by blogger Darren at the Living Room on time-spent stats for blogs. Check it out:
- How long does the average blog reader stay on a blog on any given visit?
I searched for the statistic on Google but couldn’t find it so I decided to do some of my own investigations.
I headed over to The Truth Laid Bear: Traffic Ranking Page [which seems to have time lag in it now]. It lists blogs in order of how much traffic they attract. It is limited to blogs using the Site Meter stats package that have made their statistic public.
I surveyed 350 blogs – 25% of the blogs listed (it took me a few days on my dial up connection) and found the following results.
The average reader spends 96 seconds reading the average blog.
The blogs surveyed came from across the board in terms of their traffic levels. (ie I took results from everything from Instapundit (who reportedly has 80768 visits a day) through to The Trouble with the Baby (who has 1 visit per day). [I’d really like to pump up the stats on this one, give it a visit]
Other findings
– The top ten blogs on the list had an average of only 37 seconds where as the bottom ten averaged 83 seconds….
As I commented on his site, I used to be concerned about the seemingly short period of time people spend on blogs, but then I realized you are taking into account people who literally just click through. It doesn’t take too many one- or two-second visits to bring the average down.
And he is right about traffic: the more you have the lower the time-spent average. I am happy that we are sticking pretty close to 1 minute at the 6,000 a day average. I am certain our very active comments section helps keep the average higher.