Why I brought back Tilting Pt2.

It seems Bengo has updated again and is still on about Google Trends. He still doesn't seem to know how it works, but that doesn't stop him returning to his old faithful of explanations.

People are lying about their stats and faking their analytics numbers!

He writes:

"I am puzzled that many major titles show big audience declines over the past two years, and wonder what is the cause. Confounding the mystery, I found a small study that looked at sites outside of webcomics. It found that data from Google Trends and data from the same sites' Google Analytics matched closely."

I fixed his link there, seeing as the one on his site was broken. One theory that Bengo hasn't mentioned is that the way people read webcomics is significantly different to the way that people visit other sorts of sites and so user behaviour varies greatly.

The other option is that he just doesn't know how to read a graph.
Go down to the bottom of the article and there are the example comparisons. What do you notice about them?

They don't all match up. As the writer says "In many cases last quarter, more recent period, although at Analytics stats are nor clearly going down they do at Trends". The typo's left in from the other site. What's the explanation for this? Well, they make a guess, but their final words in the matter, "who knows".

Google themselves have a possible explanation.

"15. My website's information in Trends for Websites doesn't match my own data. Why?

It's important to keep in mind that all results from Trends for Websites are estimated. Moreover, the data is updated periodically, so recent changes in traffic data may not be reflected. Finally, keep in mind that Trends for Websites is a Google Labs product, so it's still in its early stages of development and may therefore contain some inaccuracies. In the future, we may consider ways to improve the accuracy of Trends for Websites by allowing owners to contribute additional data from their sites."

That bit I bolded is important. It effectively means one thing. Trends is still in BETA and as such is still going to be full of bugs. Combine this with the differences in the way webcomic sites are used and you might see why it will have some odd results.

It also would be nice if Bengo could give us a link to some sort of evidence of the claim that "click fraud has risen dramatically every year and passed 25% a while back". Quoting statistics without sources is pretty useless and very sloppy journalism.

Another thing mentioned in the lasted entry on The Floating Lightbulb is that "there was a record amount of kook mail, all from the same Google account but using different names, genders and nationalities."

Well, we have some of that kook mail here. It seems one of Bengo's disgruntled readers has found this blog and taken me up on my offer to post any comments that Bengo wouldn't.

I'll preface this with the note that while the author was accused of using multiple personalities she stated in the email to me that she hadn't in fact sent a single email and had only attempted to comment under her own name. Here's the post that started it all:

"Hello again Bengo,

First off, may I congratulate you on becoming a running joke upon the webcomic list (both site and chat room) before asking you why you continue to spew unsubstantiated (and may I remark, poorly researched) garbage, you have not only show that you can not grasp the fundamentals of percentages, but also that you are a most paranoid, crackpot, conspiracy theorist and must be treated as such.

Congratulations must also be given as the above makes you a worlds first, the worlds first webcomic crackpot conspiracy theorist, how, may I ask, how do you feel?

You are not a researcher, as a researchers duty is to check and double check facts before sharing her/his findings, you admit that you do not, on this point I wish to share something with you, the first rule of research is that you eliminate any possible fallacious sources or information, it does not seem that you check the factual content of any information that you acquire from sources that might be lacking in integrity or perhaps showing bias.

At school, one should have learned that statistics are hardly a definitive source of information and thus should be views with a level of suspicion as should open sources like wikipedia that is so often proven wrong. May I also remark upon your most juvenile actions, by this I mean disabling your commenting to cease chatter from others who find flaws in your rants, also I must ask why do you continue to batter the halfpixel guys? Is it perhaps that it didn't work for you, if so, have you considered that comics, like art in general, is a very variable media and what worked for someone else, is hardly a guarantee of success as art (of all kinds) is hardly a science.

I wish to enquire about this store of yours, may I ask what was the url to this, perhaps some information would give credence to this claim, as on its own, hardly holds water.

Please get back to us,

Jessica Ottowell,

Creative Genius and Head of Development

fiveCARDSdown Group of Companies"

P.S.
Is Bengo including himself when he mentions "egotists, who commence axe-grinding at the first sign of dissent, and are not gracious to critics"?