OVERVIEW FOR THE REPORTS ON THIS WEBSITE

In November 2016 we added Google Analytics to my website, for the purpose of identifying various statistics relating to the website, and how the site is being used by visitors. Prior to that date I had no idea whatsoever as to how many people actually visited my website. At the same time we also added another related statistics-gathering program, Google Search Module, to the website.

Between these two programs it is possible to very quickly compile literally hundreds of different reports about a website. These programs make available many very interesting details regarding how a website is accessed and used by visitors. And with all the reports posted here you should be able to detect that I am having fun with statistics.

Not only can we know how many people visited our websites, and which pages they visited, but with the Google Search Module we can even discover the total number of internet searches in which our website appeared amongst the results, even if the people who performed those searches never end up visiting our website. That is in effect a numeric statistic about people, the majority of whom never did visit our websites.

November and December 2016 were the adjustment period for having the various search engines of the worldwide web "find" all the pages on my site. We also set up various filters to exclude our own visits, as well as excluding spam visits from all known website spammers. The collection of meaningful user data then started with January 2017.

(Comment: Websites that do not filter out visits from "spammer bots" will artificially inflate the number of apparent visits to their sites. Spammer bots affect a site’s "analytics tracking", without those robots actually visiting those sites. Real people are never involved in such "visits". This is the parallel to people being able to buy 100,000 "followers" or "likes", for a small fee, on Social Media like Twitter and Facebook, without those 100,000 people actually becoming real "followers". For websites, spammer bots produce fake visits that show up in website analysis reports as supposedly "real visits", when in fact there were no website visits involved. In order to obtain realistic data it is important to filter out such fake visits from all data that is collected. We are doing that on my website.)

The data in the reports on this website includes amongst other things information concerning the following statistics:

- number of visitors

- number of articles viewed

- number of articles printed

- number of articles downloaded

- most viewed articles

- number of countries for visitors

- which browsers were used

- number of cities for visitors

- ratio of new visitors to returning visitors

- number of searches per country in which this website appeared

For every completed year there will be:

1) 4 Quarterly Reports

2) 1 Whole Year Report

3) 1 Most Viewed Articles Report

4) 1 City Numbers By Country Report

Starting with November 2017, there will also be Monthly Reports regarding the number of internet searches done in every country, where this website appeared in those search results. This will reveal the ratio between the website actually being listed in the search results for people around the world, and the actual number of people who then came to the website as a result of those internet searches. These particular reports will only be kept for 3 months, and as a new Monthly Report is posted, so the oldest Monthly Report will be deleted.

The reports mention 4 different routes by which visitors come to the website. Here are brief explanations for those 4 routes.

"Organic Search" means that visitors came to the website as a result of typing some search term into their browser. They might land directly on the opening page of a specific article. Examples: they typed in "lucifer" or "resurrection", or a specific Scripture reference like "Ezekiel 39:2", etc., and these searches took them directly to a specific article on my website.

"Direct" means that visitors typed my website address or a part of it into their browser. Example: they typed in "www.franknelte.net". Such visitors already know the address of my website, and mostly they represent returning visitors.

"Referrals" means that visitors have come directly from another website, where there was a link to my website. All such referrals are totally unsolicited, though very welcome. I have thus far never requested any other websites to provide referrals to my site.

"Social Media" means that visitors have come from media like Twitter and Facebook, etc. This category is also totally unsolicited, though also very welcome. I personally have never yet used either Facebook or Twitter, and have no plans to do so in the future.

Let’s look at the Monthly "Searches Performed On The Internet" Reports, because that data requires some interpretation.

Consider some actual examples:

I have just performed a search on Google for the words "barley harvest". You can perform this same search yourself. This search gave me the result of "about 32,500,000 results" within a time of 0.29 seconds; i.e. for all practical purposes the result was instantaneous.

Those results list an ad on the top of page 1, followed by 7 other results on that page. Clicking on "Next" (i.e. next page), it brings up the next 10 results out of those 32+ million "hits". Number 3 from the top on that 2^nd page is an article on my website. These search results vary slightly at different times. But on average a search for "barley harvest" will list my website as #10 out of 32+ million answers to that query. Sometimes for this search my website is even listed on page 1.

Next, I did a search on "Bible mistranslations". Page 1 lists 10 different answers. Number 4 on page 1 is an article on my website. So people who do this search will immediately see my website as one possible source of information, before the other "about 92,300 results" for that search. Appearing near the top of page 1 means that there is a good chance that some of the people who do this search will come to my website.

Next, I did a search on the expression "submit yourselves". Google returned "3,230,000 results" within 0.31 seconds, with page 1 displaying the first 10 results. Number 9 on page 1 is an article on my website. So for people doing a search on this expression, there is also a reasonable chance that some of them might visit my website.

Next, I did a search on the words "Greek prepositions", which search returned "489,000 results". And number 8 on page 1 is a reference article on my website. So that search is also likely to bring some visitors to my website.

The search "lucifer" does not list my website on the first 6 pages at least (I didn’t look further). But the search "lucifer meaning" lists my website in the middle of page 1 out of "540,000 results".

Next, I did a search on "heylel", which returned "60,500 results", and my webpage is listed in the middle of page 1. So again that search is likely to bring some visitors to my website.

On the other hand, a search on "feeding of the 5000" resulted in "80,100,000 results", and my website is only listed on page 3, near the top.

So here is the point:

It doesn’t matter whether a search yields 50,000 results, or whether it yields 50,000,000 results. Only a few people will go to the second page of results when they do a search. And very few people will look at the 3^rd or 4^th or 5^th page of results for their internet searches. If a website is not listed in the first two pages of results, then it is fairly unlikely that the searcher will even see it, let alone visit that website.

So it is highly desirable for people and organizations who want other people to find their website, to have their website listed on the 1^st page of results, or at least on the 2^nd page of search results. Beyond that it is unlikely to ever be seen by the great majority of searcher.

Thus more visitors are likely to come to my website as a result of searches where my website appeared on the 1^st or the 2^nd page of results, when compared to searches where my website appeared only on page 6 or on page 20 of search results. Appearing nearer to the top of the list is always more desirable.

It is around this concept that the "SEO business" has developed, which stands for "Search Engine Optimization". By employing certain algorithms, and repeating certain key words on the opening page for any material, programmers are trying to trick search engines into listing a website "higher up" in the search results pages for people who are doing searches on the internet. I have never used any SEO techniques, though I have no problem with other people using those techniques.

I personally have no desire to artificially drive visitors to my website. I believe that those people who are seriously "asking, seeking, knocking" to find information about the Bible, will somehow find my website. I don’t have to trick them into visiting my website.

But it is interesting to take note of how high or low my website is appearing on internet searches that are performed by people in various countries. Therefore I have compiled these Monthly "Searches Performed On The Internet" Reports.

These Monthly Reports include the following data.

1) How many search results included my website. This statistic is in the report referred to as "Impressions".

2) How many people then actually came to the website, as a result of those searches. This statistic is in the report referred to as "Clicks".

3) The average position of my website in the results pages for those searches. This statistic is in the report referred to as "Average Position". When that average position is less than 10, then it is given to one decimal place. When that average position is greater than 10, then it is given in whole numbers without a decimal place.

Here is what we can glean from this report:

The first thing to consider is "the Average Position". When this number is less than 20, then for my particular website the searches that resulted in those "Impressions" (i.e. in listing my website amongst the results) were very likely religiously motivated. The smaller this number, the greater the religious motivation behind those searches. A less than 10 number here, meaning my website appeared on page 1 of the search results, indicates to me a strong religious motivation underlying those searches.

Keep in mind that these numbers represent an average for all the searches that were performed in that country during that month, with my website included in the search results. Undoubtedly some searches listed my website further down than the average number, and therefore other searches would also have listed my website even higher up in the results.

A number greater than 30 (e.g. 59 for Russia, and 78 for Morocco, both in November 2017), on the other hand, indicates that the inclusion of my website in those search results was not likely to be due to any religious interest in the material posted on my website. Very likely those searches were on subjects that are not directly addressed on my website, and my website was simply included tangentially in the search results by the search engine collecting those results. But the people weren’t really looking for anything available on my website.

Yes, the Average Position tells us a great deal about the searches that are being performed by people in that country.

For example, this information tells us that for November 2017 the people who performed searches in Guyana (24 Impressions, 8.8 Average Position, and 1 Click) were clearly doing religiously motivated searches (perhaps though not necessarily searching for the truth of God), while the people doing searches in Kosovo (21 Impressions, 66 Average Position, and 0 Clicks) were clearly doing secularly motivated searches, where my website appeared incidentally in the search results. It is the "Average Position" for all the searches, with my website in the results, that enables us to draw these conclusions. We can draw these conclusions because my website is very obviously devoted to biblical subjects. For websites devoted to secular or to commercial subjects, these figures would have to be interpreted differently.

For my website:

A favorable ratio between "Clicks" and "Impressions" is anywhere from 1:20 all the way to 1:50. One visit to my website for anywhere from 20-50 inclusions in the search results is a pleasing result. I say this because my website is always likely to also appear in the results for some searches that have nothing to do with the material I have posted on my website. And it is a foregone conclusion that the majority of the people in whose search results my website address also appeared, were not searching for the type of information available on my website.

So I look upon anything from a 1:20 to 1:50 ratio in this area as a positive result (i.e. 1 Click for 20-50 Impressions). A ratio better than 1:20 is obviously even more desirable, but that is only likely in those countries where Christianity plays a significant role in the daily lives of most people. They are the ones who are likely to do internet searches for biblical and Christian living information.

It is the Google Search Console which records how many times my website appeared in searches that were performed on the internet using Google and other search engines.

An example for interpreting this data:

1) For the month of December 2017 there were "41,411 Impressions" from the USA for my website.

2) Google Search Console next tells me that for those "41,411 Impressions from the USA" there were "1,508 Clicks", meaning that 1,508 people actually "clicked" and visited my website that month.

Note! This figure does not represent the total number of visitors from the USA who visited my website during December 2017, because the total number of visitors from the USA for that month was in fact 2,035. The figure for "Clicks" represents only those who came to the website as a result of clicking on my website address which appeared in a list of search results for some specific search they had performed in their browser. But it doesn’t include visitors who came to the site by some other routes.

3) Google Search Console next tells me the average position in the search results for those 41,411 Impressions was 14. In the report I call this "Av. Position". So in December 2017, and for the USA only:

- My website appeared in 41,411 search results.

- The average position of my website in all those results was 14.

- Of those 41,411 people 1,508 actually visited my website.

These 3 statistics are available for all countries.

The interesting point in this is the Average Position. In order for any searcher to click on my website for an answer to his search, it is important that the Average Position is small, ideally less than 10. Google normally lists 10 results on a page whenever searches are performed. Most people only very seldom look at pages 2 and 3 and 4 of their search results, let alone at page 50 (for results 491-500 of a particular search).

With a large number of Impressions, the Average Position means that there will be some Impressions with a smaller number, and other Impressions with a greater number. And the "Clicks" for that particular record will very likely be for those searches that had a small Average Position number.

Not all countries where my website appeared in some search results, actually had anyone at all from that country visit my website. For example:

In December 2017 for Algeria there were 101 Impressions, searches in which my website appeared as a result. The Average Position for those 101 Impressions was 89 (i.e. at the bottom of page 9 of the search results). And there were 0 Clicks for those 101 Impressions. So in December 2017 no website visitors came from Algeria as a result of some internet search (though for the whole of 2017 there were 7 website visitors from Algeria). The large Average Position number of 89 indicates that most of the searches that resulted in the 101 Impressions had nothing to do with the Bible. The searches were not really about material that is posted on my website.

So when we can correctly interpret the data provided in these Monthly Reports, then this can reveal some interesting information.

Please proceed to the reports of your choice.