I'm very glad I took Mordecai's advice and set up Google Analytics to track usage of this blog. It's fascinating to look at the "Geo Map Overlay" and see where people are reading, or more accurately, where the servers are that grab it for someone, presumably nearby, to read. (It's also embarrassing to see what a fraction of the count is from the server I use. Am I that narcissistic? I hope it's more that updating the blog necessarily forces me to look at it rather a lot.)
It's also a little scary to see how easily my thoughts turn to how to increase readership and coverage. "Gee, we had readers in Japan before, but none now. How can I change that?" or "I'm missing Africa and Antarctica..." (as if people there have nothing better to do than to read my blathering!). I wish I'd started earlier, so I would have more data to look for trends in... there, I'm doing it again!
I don't have a "market" as such. I am doing this for fun. Funny how quickly a little data makes me start to think like a TV network executive chasing ratings!
3 comments:
Hi Melissa. My frequent trips to my own blog (I tend to edit, as well as look for comments) were skewing my statistics. My IP address is not fixed, but does stay the same unless the connection is broken, so I set up a filter to get my address out of the stats.
I have also been surprised and pleased to see how many pageviews my humble blog is receiving and just where those hits are coming from. Thank you for passing along the info from Mordecai. I'm hooked on Google-Analytics now.
And wait until you look at the search terms people use to find our blogs! Some of them are rather hilarious (or the combo's are at least)
Could u please turn on anonymous comments allowed? First life / Second life identity conflicting here, you see. ;)
OK, I'll turn on anonymous comments. However, if it proves to open a window for comment spam, I will turn it off immediately and it will stay off.
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