Statistics, more Statistics and Depression

Getting Indexed in Google
Are you are a compulsive statistics checker? Do you Google your domain url 15 times a day to see if you are indexed yet? Do you check Adsense on the hour every hour to see if you have made another 6c ? Do you worry if your visitor numbers to your hub or lens drops from 9 to 8? Yes you are obsessed with your statistics. You are not alone: I get out of bed and flick through my domains checking to see if they are in Google’s index yet (Hint: just enter mydomain.com in Google’s search bar will do it). Yes statistics can be very useful: if you can’t measure something you don’t know whether you are getting better or worse.

However until you have got first indexed in Google and second had a reasonable amount of time (that’s months not hours people!) to collect statistics you are seeing nothing but meaningless variations. Unfortunately those meaningless variations cause lots of people to give up before they get started. OK your site isn’t making anything after 3 months: you delete it. Unfortunately maybe the next day Google was finally going to index your site and throw it onto page 1 for your long tail keyword: what a shame!

So When Should you Check your Statistics?

Actual is not normal (a tribute to Edward Tufte)
Originally uploaded by kevindooley

1. When you new website has been running for 6 months minimum
2. When your new blog site has been running for 3 months minimum.
3. When your hubpage has been up for 1 month minimum
4. When you are testing a new form of promotion.
5. When you are testing a new advertising campaign
6. When you need to record what your income was for the month because you made so much money you are going to have to start paying tax on it!

You have Compulsive Statistics Checking Disorder When:

1. You spend more time checking statistics than writing content, promoting sites or running your business.
2. You know that you have a new click because you have memorised what the numbers were: for 10 sites!
3. You are hugely exciting to have calculated that you will reach the Adsense $100 payment threshold in 4 months, 25 days and 13 hours.
4. You know immediately if the statistics program is running slow and you havent seen a click update for 30 minutes.