Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Analytics

Google is always trying to hook me up with their latest and greatest gadget for making my blog be smarter, be hipper, and make all the little girls swoon.   I have at times taken them up on their new gizmo offers, but generally I ignore them.  New gadgets mean I need to decipher language and instructions that often leave me saying ?huh? even after reading them four times.  Such was the case when I hooked up with "Analytics" a few years back when Google first introduced it.  It just doesn't tell me how many people have stopped by.  I think if I know what filters to use, it will tell me their underwear size and what color they were wearing when they stopped by.

It's got bounce rates, number of visitors, number of page views, how long they view each page, percentage numbers that move up and down to some mystical formula only the google gurus have the key for.  Analytics breaks down my blog into mathematical language that is probably valuable if I cared about making money.  But since my Life has proven its unwillingness or lack of interest in making money, I sort of stopped worrying about what numbers mean.  I got money in my pocket or I don't.  If I don't, then there's always the credit card.  And by using it I will ensure a steadfast adherence to my Life's will to not have any money.

So I have this fancy gadget I barely looked at over the past few years.  It doesn't care if I ignore it.  It patiently does it's job, day in day out crunching numbers and having them ready to report at a millisecond's notice.

My habit would be to check Analytics when taking a brief breather from writing posts or reading posts.  I would open it up and look at all the numbers, graphs, pie charts and what not and say to myself,  "Oh look 30 people stopped by yesterday."  And then I would leave.  But like any good habit, I broke it as soon as I could.  I stopped checking at all.

It had been maybe a year since I last checked Analytics.  I opened it up and I was surprised to find that my daily average had jumped from 0 to 30 or so hits to over 100 hits a day.  There were even some days that cruised into the stratosphere or my stratosphere of over 200 hits a day.  And instead of the same 30 people from 3 countries, I had been visited by at least one person from 68 countries. 

I have no delusions of grandeur.  I know my blog is not shaking the World.  In the scheme of A-B-C ratings of blogs, mine probably sits somewhere between P and Q.  But it did pump a little more P.S.I. into my already inflated ego. 

I only bring this up because yesterday.....no make that Saturday........1,124 visitors swung by my blog.  And then Sunday, Life returned to a normal 106 visitors.  The dynamics and flow of my Analytics graph are all screwed up now.

I wanted to find out what suddenly caused 1000 people more than normal to check out my blog on the same day.  So I dug deeper into the belly of the beast and was immediately lost as I tried to decipher page after page of where the hits were coming from.  Direct traffic, referring sites, Search engines, who knew, who cared.  My suspicion is that a post I wrote over a year ago caused this.  The spike coincided with a snarky comment on Wingers with Woodies.  But then I have only my gut to rely on and my deeply seeded mistrust of those evil doers from the Right.  Far and away that one post accounts for over 70% of my traffic.

One post out of almost a thousand posts  A post that was my usual nonsense, nothing I worked very hard on.  I wrote it to tweak noses and apparently I did.  The comments keep coming.  And most of them are concerned over the obvious photo shopped image of one of their sacred talking cows.

This Blogosphere is indeed an odd world.

10 comments:

muddleglum said...

I would guess your spike is from several million people doing a google search for your heroine. One of the hits was your blog, which a small percentage clicked and scanned long enough to grunt and go.

Now, mind your p's and q's and add several celebrities to each of your blog posts. Write stories where a super model meets a sports star and watch google feed you to more of the world.

Otherwise you might end up back here in the zzzzz's again.

BBC said...

I've also had a few posts that spiked my hits, mostly when talking about sex or bitching about christians and muslims.

Google is always trying to hook me up with their latest and greatest gadget for making my blog be smarter, be hipper, and make all the little girls swoon.

I don't pay any attention to all that extra shit, or use it. I use Stat Counter to see where my visitors are from, and how often they visit and all that shit.

After insulting someone in a country on the other side of this rock you can temper it by adding that they have a fine cock, that's something they can relate to. :-)

Chef Cthulhu said...

Fuckin' wingnuts.

susan said...

It was just recently I found my stat counter quite by accident. Otherwise, I follow blogs but don't post a list of who follows me because I think it's silly too. So far as I'm concerned the only people who count are the ones who are kind enough to leave comments. Why would anyone in their right mind want a million 'friends'?

Commander Zaius said...

Got to love Anonymous comments, all full of bluster and certainty one minute only to slither under their rocks again and back into the woodwork.

I play with the stat counters on my site but after watching them for a couple of weeks somehow the numbers didn't seem to add up.

The Blog Fodder said...

I thought I was doing good getting to 40 hits per day and all of 28 followers. I get hits from all over the world and no idea why. Most are single hits which I guess are accidental Googles for something. I'm with Susan, I live for the comments. then I know I registered with a reader and also learn something to boot.

yellowdoggranny said...

my stats say I have between 7,000-9,000 hits a month..I think they are Middle Eastern guys looking for granny's to have sex with.

MRMacrum said...

muddleglum - I'm sure I get a lot of grunt n go's.

BBC - I really should comment on their phallic manliness for sure. It would go a long way in smoothing any feathers I may have ruffled.

Chef Cthulhu - Sir, I am sure your package is the envy of all your buds down to the locker room at the local Y.*

* Please note that the previous was just my first attempt to swing a wayward soul back to the side of Good. If for some reason your package is not the man bag I had indicated, I truly am sorry. My intentions were good.

susan - The peanut gallery that speaks up gets the lolipop. I too enjoy the comments the most. Often more than the dribble I laid down to draw them to my evil lair.

Beach Bum - Numbers only add up when we have the answer before hand. Haven't you learned anything from the talking heads on Fox?

Blog Fodder - Creating a dialog does seem more appealing to me also. But then lurking also appeals to the peeping tom that exists just behind my pleasant exterior. At least he's fully clothed.

YellowDog Granny - If I was a Middle Eastern Guy from say Virginia, I would surely be talking up the granny sites. I know my peeping tom would love it.

Randal Graves said...

Naked X, Y or Z mentions are apparently the cure for the hitless blues.

okjimm said...

//This Blogosphere is indeed an odd world.//

yessirree bob, it sure is. I checked one of those thingees out a bit and a half back and came to the conclusion that it was the number of blogs I didn't get around to that mattered more to me than the number that got around to mine. And then I figgered out that I liked the ones that found there way ... as I did. And then I got tired of thinking...