Features
Traffic spike alerts
When a post takes off, you hear about it while it is happening. MetricRaven compares the last hour with your usual traffic and emails you once per spike, with the sources and pages that drive it.
Turn it on or off
Open Settings → Notifications
Under Your emails, switch Traffic spike alerts. It is on by default for every member, and each member chooses for themselves.
When an alert is sent
Every few minutes we count unique visitors in the last 60 minutes and compare them with the site’s last 7 days, hour by hour. It counts as a spike when the last hour has at least:
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| 25 visitors | So a quiet site needs a real crowd, not three friends. |
| 3× the usual hour | So a steady site needs several times its normal traffic. |
| The usual hour plus four standard deviations | So a site whose traffic swings a lot has to beat its own noise. |
All three must hold. Sites with less than three days of history don’t get spike alerts yet.
One email per spike
- After an alert, nothing more is sent while the spike lasts.
- A spike ends when the last hour drops below 60% of the threshold.
- A new spike can alert at the earliest 12 hours after the previous email.
What the email shows
Visitors in the last hour against your usual hour, the top sources (each compared with its own usual traffic, such as “168× more than usual”, or marked new), the top pages, and a link to the dashboard to watch it live.
Bots and excluded visits never count. The email’s unsubscribe link turns off spike alerts for that site only.