I’ve been using a little widget on the sidebar from Amung Us for quite some time that shows the number of visitors currently on the blog. It’s kinda cool.
The map above is a new (to me) Amung Us feature that shows where previous visitors have come from. It also updates in real time, and the little flashing stars are for the folks currently on the site. You can hover over the map’s stars and improve your geography as well. There is a smaller version suitable for sidebar use as well. I currently use ClustrMaps in my sidebar (bottom of the middle sidebar) and might replace it with this one. ClustrMaps stores data and only updates occasionally, Amung Us updates in real time. (UPDATE: Be sure to read the comment the ClusterMap team left here for a better explanation of their product).
There is also a graphing widget, but the graphing module is temporarily offline.
Amung Us doesn’t cost anything, so give it a whirl if you are interested.
[tags]Amung Us, blog stats, map widget[/tags]
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy was started by Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... he liked to say...
Hey that's pretty cool Jay, you have all the gadgets, – like "Bond, James Bond".
Very nice, I almost have 1/1000 of your visitiors. Very cool tool by the way.
Cool toy, I looked at the count on my site and decided to wait 🙂
Hi Jay – interesting posting and cool new widget; speaking from the ClustrMaps perspective (naturally) I just wanted to point out the following:
1. ClustrMaps is more about speed and scalability of the display: we cluster our dots with a proprietary algorithm, and render them instantly on your site… which creates a different end-user experience
2. We update DENSE maps (like yours) only when there has been a 10% increase in the number of visitors shown – because otherwise you can't notice the difference. This is in the interests of scalability.
3. We also provide much better zoomed-in map in our ClustrMaps+ edition: I've upgraded you just now, so that will 'kick in' at your next update.
4. We personally take note of what our user write on their own blogs – that's why I'm responding to this on the weekend!
I hope that makes sens… would be very interested to hear more feedback from you. You can adjust your 'archive' frequency on your Admin page (I suggest setting it to MONTHLY) if you want to go back to regular daily updates: it's all a trade-off, after all. Amung.us looks very cool, no doubt about it, but they're addressing a slightly different niche and need, and hope we can coexist.
Many thanks for listening.
-CJ on behalf of the ClustrMaps Team
Cool widget, I'll have my website company add it to my blog. Thanks for the info
CJ / ClustrMaps Team –
Thanks for stopping by, appreciate your comments.
I do like how ClustrMaps shows the frequency of visits based on "dot size".
I've been pondering changing the archive frequency, but I sort like seeing all that activity there!
Thanks for the upgrade!
How cool is this?! My star is flashing! As with every new toy, my first inclination is to load her up, but I fear I would be left with an empty map on my side bar. It could seriously backfire.
Jay, how many stars or visitors would you consider a very strong real estate website? On a monthly basis….
Kris – you are a star with or without this "widget".
Richard – that is a *really* hard question to answer. It depends on your definition of "strong" — the reason you are blogging. If you're blogging for prospect generation, well, it is a numbers game so the more the better I suppose. If you're blogging as a writing outlet, then it doesn't really matter. If you're blogging to learn, for the incredible education you can get from doing this, then visitor count doesn't matter either.
A lot of real estate blogs put themselves on "Blog Top Sites" which has some publicly available stats. The little "chicklet" indicator in my side bar currently shows this blog at #32 (out of 427 real estate related blogs). They show about 300 unique visits here daily. Other stats I run show closer to 350 (but I suspect topsites is low for everyone). HousingPanic is consistently #1 or 2 on that list at about 4,000 daily uniques. Bloodhound Blog seems to be running about 1,000/day. (These numbers do NOT reflect the number of people reading through RSS readers, which can be significant.)
But I don't "compete" with either HP or Bloodhound. We all have completely different audiences and goals.
This is not to say I have the 32nd most read real estate blog blog on the planet as there are hundreds of blogs that don't use this tracking site. I'm sure there are many RE blogs out there with fewer visitors, and many with more.
We get plenty of business from the blog, so I'd call it "strong" regardless of the visitor count.
Would I like more? Well sure, who wouldn't. We usually get more visitors in a given month than we got in the previous month, so the growth is good.
Make sense?
Very Nice. 300 to 350 visitors a day, well that makes you an authority without question.
Looks interesting, I will have to try it.
Now that amung us is offline temporally, visit comestat.com to get a similar widget to post in the blog.
it's all, see ya.