Click Tracking

One of the many things I have always loved about Brad Feld’s blog is the stats on outbound clicks you get when you "mouse over" links on his blog.  I’ve said many times to myself, "i’ve got to get that thing".

So yesterday evening, I got that thing.

"That thing" is called My Blog Log and it’s as simple as opening an account and copying some javascript into your blog template.

So now you will start to see these little boxes pop-up when you mouse over the links on my blog.

I had the choice of whether to report the rating of the link (6th most popular) or the number of outbound clicks (10 clicks today).  I chose the latter, but may try it both ways before settling on a preference.

The blogger/publisher also gets stats on his clicks and the ability to put a widget on the blog that lists the top outbound links of the day.

When I went to look at my outbound links this morning (after 12 hours of activity), I was aghast to find that 11 of the top 20 outbound links last night were porn links that had been inserted into several of my most popular posts via comment spam.

Yikes.  No way am I going to put that widget on the front page right now.

A side benefit of this click tracking is I’ve found several pockets of high value comment spam on my blog and eradicated them.  I feel better already.

So "that thing" has already been incredibly valuable to me in the first 12 hours.

If you want to get it for yourself, just go to My Blog Log and sign up.