I had fun with Google analytics this week. I was provided access to the account for the DataONE website and it makes some interesting “reading.” Top page: “create and document backup policy”. Lots of interest in best practices generally, and in the upcoming webinars. Looking at audience for the last six month you can likely guess the top country (USA), but I think the number 2 might surprise. Answer at the end of the blog, and bonus points if you guessed correctly! There were 167 countries represented (excluding those with a Bounce rate of 100 – which means they left from the home page without exploring further). Clearly the website has a wide reach, and it raise some interesting questions on impact.
Some more reading this week on altmetrics, and the limitations of citation analysis. There are issues with traditional metrics, the more so for data, but I’m still not sure how social media metrics show impact for datasets. I can see the importance of downloads, and I think there needs to be more research on how datasets are used in research. When other forms of social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook – mention a resource it provides an immediacy of impact. But doesn’t a more important impact occurs when someone goes to get that resource?
(Back to Google analytics. Second highest country access: India)