pMetrics: A view from the clouds

pMetrics just got a few new features. To your left is the new cloud view, which is available for every “popular items” page (links, content, downloads, searches, search engines, etc). Any time you see those three little icons in the top right corner (click the shot to see them), that means you can view the current data as a cloud and/or export it to CSV, in addition to the old boring bar graph. Yes, you read that right! We now have data export as well.

If you are unfamiliar with clouds, they are very handy. You can fit more data in less space, and the size and color of words cues you to their importance, or weight. It also puts the “long tail” more up front and in your face, since it is ordered randomly when you first load that view. Don’t underestimate the importance of the long tail. Our clouds also show you the “raw” numbers (hits and percent of total) if you hover your mouse over any of the items, so they don’t just look pretty – you can extract real data from them too.

Whatever site, content, and date range you are viewing…. clicking between those icons will give you the exact same data, in three different formats. The bar graph shows your top 50, as it always has. Clouds show your top 100. And data export gives you your top 500. Clouds and export even work with FeedBurner items and clickthroughs! The only areas that don’t have these new features yet are the dashboard, visitors, and actions. Actions would make no sense, visitors might work to show you who has been most active on your site recently, but I’m not sure we’ll do that. Data from the dashboard will be available eventually.

Clouds are available to everyone. Data export is also available to everyone for a few weeks, but it will eventually become a Pro only feature, as has been stated here and on the upgrade page for a while now.

Enjoy!