Performancing has been on a roll lately. First, a blogging tool for Firefox and now, Performancing Metrics has been launched, a service for tracking blog statistics. We now have Measure Map (Review), BlogBeat (Review), and Performancing Metrics offering easy solutions to blog analytics. They all offer similar statistics with a few extras here and there, but I think the key is in presenting the data. Performancing has a unique method of presenting the data where specific statistics are assigned to three main categories (Visitors, Activity, and Marketing) and also consists of multiple containers with sliders to narrow down on date ranges. But what got me excited was the fact that you can track multiple blogs under one account! Performancing has also stated in their launch writeup, “In a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to show you the aggregate data for your entire network also.” I don’t own multiple blogs myself, but I am sure other can definitely see the benefit of tracking multiple blogs under one service. Now, lets take a look at what Metrics has to offer. I don’t have too much data on Metrics yet, but enough to show a visual of the service for you. One last note: Metrics is free and includes blog support for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, TypePad, and Blogger. It is also said to work for any basic website, but includes more functionality for supported blogs.

Once you setup a blog with Metrics and insert the given code into your site, you can then view the dashboard, Metrics start page. You may have to wait a bit for the data to start coming in though. The dashboard will give you an overview of statistics being collected from your blog covering visitors, comments, search engine traffic, popular pages and more. What I like most about the dashboard though are how the top three containers have small sliders below each bar chart that you can drag left to right for selecting set date ranges from the current week to four weeks. Each container has its own slider to show seperate statistics for different date ranges, making it very easy for you to get an overall view of your traffic.

What I like about Metrics, and I mentioned before, is that the data is split into three main sections. Each section also has its own dashboard page like the main start page so you can get a quick overall view of stats. You get a section for Visitor statistics covering basic numbers of visitors, browsers, screen resolutions, geography, etc.. An Activity section providing blog related stats with individual post views, comments, and categories. And lastly, a section for Marketing statistics covering referrers, search engines, outbound links, and even AdSense clicks. The above screenshot is of the Marketing Dashboard. I can quickly see how my blog is doing on one page, although I can’t tell how the AdSense click tracking performs yet because I haven’t received any since installing Metrics. But, each of the main three sections have similar dashboards that include three head containers with sliders and additional information below them. You can then drill down into each individual subsections of data in a section to get more detailed statistics.

Drilling down into a subsection will show you more detailed statistics in tables and graphs to give a visual on the data. Nothing too different from your usual statistics script, but one feature that stands out it the date range options. On the top left of a graph, you will see “today” with a downward arrow next to it. Hover your mouse over it and you can then select a set date range of data to be shown on the graph. Quick and easy. Also, if you are viewing a bar graph, some sections also have tables below the graphs that show the results with the associated color from the bar graph so you can match the data easily.

Overall, Performancing Metrics seems to work great and has some great features. One of the drawbacks is that it seems to update statistics once every hour, but still is better then some stat packages out there (such as Google Analytics). I love the way the dashboard views, and what I think would be really neat was if we could make our own personalized dashboard. For example, a personalized page that will let me see see visitors, search engines, comments, adsense clicks, all on one page in the little containers with the sliders. I also would like to see RSS feed tracking with FeedBurner integration so I can view feed statistics as well without leaving Metrics. Other then that, everything is great and the multiple blog functionality is excellent how anyone can track multiple blogs for free under one package. Metrics also has an API available for programmers if anyone was interested.

View Blog Statistics with Performancing Metrics.

Update: Darren Rowse has a more in-depth review.