31–40 of 113 posts
I get by with Apache log analysis with webalizer or goaccess. I used to have Google analytics on the site but then I decided what for - so I removed that.
The author lacks imagination or is not arguing entirely in good faith: > I realised that knowing about my website visitors had zero effect on anything in the real world. Perhaps that's true for them? But you don't have to try too hard to think of legitimate reasons why basic analytics are useful to any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience,…
When someone does it for the audience I always consider it more of a publication. Maybe that just semantics, but that's been the distinction for me.
The author lacks imagination or is not arguing entirely in good faith: > I realised that knowing about my website visitors had zero effect on anything in the real world. Perhaps that's true for them? But you don't have to try too hard to think of legitimate reasons why basic analytics are useful to any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience,…
You get visited page, time of visit and a minimal user identifier (preferred locale/user agent, source IP). That should provide enough data for those questions. If you want to make it slightly more privacy friendly and cheaper only store aggregate data (visited page counts etc).
The problem here is probably that logs are not always accessible (managed services like GitHub/GitLab pages).
2. I use SimpleAnalytics
3. I think Search Console is useful
4. But then, really?
PS: Over the last year, my impression in search more than doubled, my clicks fell 75% #AgeOfAI
When making a blog post, how else do you get this feedback? 99% of people click, read it, then move on. Quantifying how many people have read, how long they spent reading, and where they came from, is an essential part of interacting with the digital world. Without it you are flying blind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience, when to post for bets result, comparing different styles of post etc. Why would I want to read a blog like that? That's hack writing 101. There's a million of those writers shovelling out that drivel on LinkedIn (which sells them all the analytics they need to do it). I want to read blogs by people…
You could make the counter-argument: Why would I want to read something written by someone who doesn't care about their audience at all? Both of those are extreme positions.
The author lacks imagination or is not arguing entirely in good faith: > I realised that knowing about my website visitors had zero effect on anything in the real world. Perhaps that's true for them? But you don't have to try too hard to think of legitimate reasons why basic analytics are useful to any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience,…
any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience, when to post for bets result, comparing different styles of post etc. Why would I want to read a blog like that? That's hack writing 101. There's a million of those writers shovelling out that drivel on LinkedIn (which sells them all the analytics they need to do it). I want to read blogs by people…
I didn't downvote but want to try to explain some of the mindset of some of the authors who do care about analytics and how it affects what they work on.
The 2 different activities need to be separated:
(1) passionate about a _topic_
vs
(2) passionate about _writing_about_ a topic.
Some people need some validation from a growing audience (i.e. see visitor stats) to continue to work on (2).
An example of this I came across was a analyst who was really knowledgeable about tele-communications, cell towers, datacenters, etc. He wrote some blogs and created videos about how the industry players work. It was really good analytical work. Unfortunately, he didn't gain a big audience following from it and quit after just 10 months.
He's still in the industry and I'm sure he's still "passionate" about the topic of next gen cell towers, etc. Just no longer passionate about blogging into an empty void.
One could then argue, "why does an author need to care about blogging to an empty void?!?". I don't know what to say. I guess it's just humans being humans and some want a little social proof that whatever they put a lot of time into is useful to more people than a tiny niche audience.
I would like to know how many people visit the blog and from which countries. It can be used to measure it reaches people at all.