Written by Econintersect
Note: The first posting of this article was corrupted by a manual publishing error. This is the second (and correct posting).
We publish a report each week presenting a list of the articles Google Analytics reports as being the most read. Last week’s report is here. We think that does not necessarily reflect how much “value” readers have obtained from what we publish. So we are offering a second listing which combines the number of readers for each article with the average amount of time spent reading by each.
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Before presenting this new ranking, let us explain our thinking. If one article has 500 page reads with an average time for each of one minute we suggest that another article with 100 page reads and an average time for each of 5 minutes might have an equivalent “value”: 500 page read minutes (8.3 page read hours).
This measurement does not attempt to quantify the value readers received. The 500 reading an average of 1 minute each may perceive much more personal value for their individual minutes than do the 100 who each spent 5 minutes. What this measurement of ‘page read minutes’ directly measures is the effective reader engagement by each article. Rather than “value” we might better say “engagement” or “used”.
After some consideration we have elected to try the term “usefulness” and selected the term “useful” for the title of the list.
The Most Useful Articles Week Ending 12 December
We are experimenting with a more efficient way to prepare this list for publication which will eliminate manual steps (and possible transcription errors). Below is the spreadsheet table with the final column being the number of ‘page read hours’ for that article.
If you click on a link to view an article, hit ‘back arrow‘ to return to this page.
The above list penalizes articles which are quickly read and include videos that are watched on YouTube. The introduction and link to YouTube may take 30 seconds or less and then our reader may stay 5, 10, 20 minutes or longer with the video – this measurement gives no credit for that video time.
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