first review: flickr stats

Flickr has recently released a feature allowing users to see the usage statistics for their photos. It took a couple of days from when I signed up for the system to churn out my stats but it was well worth the wait. Here’s some screenshots…

Daily aggregate and total view count figures give insight into which photos, sets and collections are being viewed and allow you to see usage trends over time:

Most viewed over time threw up some real surprises. My most viewed photo, with 2,785 views, is of a help wanted sign in a pub window where "good spoken English essensial" and my second most viewed, with 2,504 views, is this shot of an ipod nano next to a tube ticket. The rest of the top ten are no surprise and most consist of photos I took at and around Kings Cross the day after the tube bombings as well as a photo of the free Alan Johnston banner on Television Centre that was used and linked to by the BBC Editors Blog. Here’s the list:

You can also drill down on an individual photo to see traffic trends and referrers:

The Top Referrers shows you where your traffic has come from. This is a good way to keep track of who is using your photos on their blogs – I noticed two I wasn’t aware of in just yesterday’s stats (I don’t mind as I use a creative commons non-commercial attribution license):

Finally, there is the top level break down of your photos, showing how many are public or private, how many are tagged, number that have been viewed and commented on, etc. I was pleased to see that 438 of my 1952 photos have received comments and 123 have been favourited – not bad considering the vast majority are random cameraphone photos:

Flickr stats gives flickr user access to the same type of powerful usage statistics as most bloggers have through services like statcounter and google analytics. One detail that doesn’t seem to be currently available, however, is tracking of the usage of individuals by IP. I suppose that’s down to privacy concerns but it would be useful if geo-IP could be used to show the location of visitors in aggregate.