Blog Statistic - Length of Stay

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. 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).

Other findings

- The top ten blogs on the list had an average of only 37 seconds where as the bottom ten averaged 83 seconds.

- Apart from the 'top ten' there was not a huge difference between blogs receiving high and low traffic. For example - blogs receiving 60 visits per day had an average visit length of 100 seconds which was almost the same as blogs averaging 2000 visits a day (ave 97 seconds).

- Blogs with comments scored a higher average than those without. (this might partly explain the 'top ten' scoring lower as most of them do not have comments) I did not collect data on this, but it became very clear anecdotally.

Implications

96 seconds is not a very long time. It is quite disillusioning to realize that after slaving over a post for hours (or days as this one has taken me) that it is likely to be skimmed over in less than two minutes)

The average blogger would desire to lengthen the stay of their reader. This motivation might be that they are trying to create community and build relationships with their readers. It might be that they have advertising on their site (the longer the stay the more chance of a click through) or it might be that they are wanting to have some sort of a lasting impact on their reader through their writing - the longer the stay the higher chance of this.

Is interaction the key?

My study is by no means conclusive in terms of comments adding to length of stay on blogs - however it does indicate that if bloggers allow for their readers to respond and interact with the writer and each other that they will stay longer. Therefore an interactive approach might be a wise move for bloggers desiring lengthy visits.

Areas for further research

- Does blog design/loading time impact the the length of stay?
- Does blog topic impact the length of stay?
- Do bloggers from certain countries (with high local readership) have different lengths of stay?
- Does posting length have an impact?

This brief survey is limited by the accuracy of Site Meters measuring of length of stay. The way they do this is by measuring the difference in time between page views on a site. Accuracy is a problems as some readers will only view the one page on a site - thus registering a time of 0 seconds for their length of stay. Once again this may partly explain how the 'top ten' have low averages as I guess that they would have more readers surfing in throughout the day to check for updates and not surfing through links.

Would love to hear your opinions on these results - ideas for further research and ways that you try to lengthen the stay of your readers.

So grab a coffee, put your feet up click on comments below and stay a while!

Check out my mini survey into Gender and Blogging