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Using analytics on my website

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Re: Using analytics on my website

#41

Post by palata »

rambambram wrote: post #23
quickthrower2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea - one "analytic" is to put your email on the site, and see how many people say hello!

I have visitor statistics enabled on my site and I like to see how many visits I get on articles. The point is to not see more in it than it can tell you, so I don't really understand the 'remove all statistics because it doesn't matter' argument. However, I must say your idea is a very good one!

I see it like this:

- If the analytics don't change the way you write, then they are useless overhead. - If they change the way you write (because you try to maximize the number of views), then they may be toxic.

IMO you should write what you have to say, not what you believe people will want to read (with the help of tracking).

When I realized that, I removed GoatCounter from my website, which is now a minimal, static, no-javascript, no-tracking personal blog. And it feels good.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#42

Post by palata »

For a personal website with few readers (say one view per day), it's difficult to know if the analytics report actual viewers or bots. Therefore it's useless.

For a personal website with many readers (say more than 100 views per day), it's vanity in the best case, and bad influence in the worst case (one should not produce content just to make more views, that's the lesson we get from social media). Therefore it's useless, at best.

For commercial websites I don't know. If I had to guess, I would say it's not making the world a better place, but maybe it helps someone justifying their job (which I see as a reason, but not as an excuse).

Re: Using analytics on my website

#43

Post by wcrossbow »

joshmanders wrote: post #37
wcrossbow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But anything smaller than that and analytics are mostly vanity metrics I removed any analytics from my blog because I'm already obsessed enough with silly star counts. It manages to completely suck away all the joy; ignorance is bliss here. I found that the rare email or comment from some random person saying that they found something useful is much more fulfilling and at the same time less invasive of my brain act…

I don't use analytics on my personal sites for vanity metrics. I use it to see where people are coming to my site from and the stuff they seem to resonate with.

Upon a bit of introspection I found that for me, such things were just ways of stroking my ego. I just find it liberating to not really care or give much thought about what my audience cares about or who they are. I write first and foremost for myself, second to help others and third to have something to show to prospective employers.

What those metrics mean to oneself is different for everybody. Also, being a vanity metric and being useful are not mutually exclusive either.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#44

Post by joshmanders »

wcrossbow wrote: post #43
joshmanders wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use analytics on my personal sites for vanity metrics. I use it to see where people are coming to my site from and the stuff they seem to resonate with.

Upon a bit of introspection I found that for me, such things were just ways of stroking my ego. I just find it liberating to not really care or give much thought about what my audience cares about or who they are. I write first and foremost for myself, second to help others and third to have something to show to prospective employers. What those metrics mean to oneself is different for everybody. Also, being a vanity…

I like to know where my users are coming from and discussing what I wrote so I can engage them and have discussions with them too.

Not saying ignoring all that is bad, just my reasons for wanting analytics and not just ego stroking and vanity metrics.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#45

Post by joshyi »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #35
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

GoAccess is nice but when I tried it a few years ago I found that the results were not accurate. Maybe on a large site the signal rises way above the noise but I found for my blog/project site (with maybe 20 hits a day) the counts consisted of obvious bots that GoAccess didn't filter correctly. Google Search Console is also widely inaccurate in the other direction. I ended up just implementing a simple hit counter[0]…

If accuracy refers solely to human-vs-bot detection, there might be a point, but for comprehensive traffic analysis, access logs are unparalleled in accuracy.

JavaScript analytics are increasingly prone to inaccuracies due to numerous methods available for manipulating data, leading to the generation of inaccurate events from JavaScript endpoints. Staying current in the field reveals a growing trend of blockers employing AI-driven detection, rendering JavaScript analytics less relevant in these cases.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#46

Post by joshyi »

bluish29 wrote: post #21
KronisLV wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. GoAccess seems pretty cool and is probably a good task for the job, when you need something simple, thanks for recommending it: https://goaccess.io/ Even if you have analytics of some sort already in place, I think it'd probably still be a nice idea to run GoAccess on your server, behind some additional auth, so you can check up on how the web servers are performing (in lieu of oth…

Actually you don't even need Goaccess running all the time. They parse nginx logs directly so you can only run it when you want to do it (although in practice it takes sometime to parse and create graphs).

I would contend the contrary. Our company consistently runs GoAccess because we are primarily concerned with unusual traffic patterns. This involves monitoring for potential attacks or abnormal bot traffic that might impact our servers, etc.

While JS analytics tools might be of more interest to the marketing team, they are not as crucial for the devops team.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#47

Post by joshyi »

sofixa wrote: post #11
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. You don't need more than access logs. What are you going to do with that analytics data anyway? How much can you even trust that it's real and not bots that are getting better every day? I can provide you a very simple example. You have a blog, with articles. On a multi-thousand word article, you know that traffic that spent You get the point, I hope. Access logs are useless for th…

While JS analytics may suit the needs of marketing professionals concerned with product sales and article visibility, those focused on precise traffic patterns, like daily devops, find GoAccess to be a more effective tool.

JS analytics face an escalating risk of inaccuracies due to the myriad ways data can be manipulated, resulting in the generation of unreliable events from JavaScript endpoints. Keeping up with the industry reveals an emerging trend of blockers using AI-driven detection, diminishing the relevance of JavaScript analytics in such scenarios.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#48

Post by joshyi »

zoidb wrote: post #18

I suggest using analytics that you can self-host, like https://www.goatcounter.com/ and renting a cheap vm to run it on along with your blog. It is way better, you have more control and you can be sure that javascript tracking is working for 100% of people using the site since you have full control over it not getting blocked by adblockers.

JS analytics are increasingly susceptible to inaccuracies as data manipulation methods multiply, leading to the production of unreliable events from JavaScript endpoints. Staying abreast of industry developments highlights a rising trend of blockers leveraging AI-driven detection, reducing the significance of JavaScript analytics in such situations.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#49

Post by joshyi »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #22
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The benefit with using JS instead of access logs are that scraping bots, security scanners etc usually don't call your JS analytics so for a small site the number % of bots can be 90% of the logs. And you can use your analytics data to better understand your users because again most bots won't trigger your analytics script (because why would they execute it and waste their CPU cycles on that?). And yes, you can't tru…

I think many developers overlook this aspect. If you're not in marketing, it's not just about tallying human visitors on our sites. It's essential to be vigilant against possible daily attacks and avoid excessive reliance on basic JS analytics.

Even for personal websites, relying solely on JS can compromise security. We require precise data, and logs prove more dependable than JS, especially with the increasing number of tools tampering with JS data.

We should steer clear of the trap of exclusively focusing on the count of human visitors.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#50

Post by joshyi »

KronisLV wrote: post #4
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. GoAccess seems pretty cool and is probably a good task for the job, when you need something simple, thanks for recommending it: https://goaccess.io/ Even if you have analytics of some sort already in place, I think it'd probably still be a nice idea to run GoAccess on your server, behind some additional auth, so you can check up on how the web servers are performing (in lieu of oth…

I believe JS analytics tools serve marketing well, providing estimates like who's purchasing my product or how many are reading my article.

However, for devops, relying too much on these tools can be a trap, potentially causing security and server issues without immediate detection. Our team opts for goaccess for this reason. We prioritize accurate data from logs and scrutinize traffic patterns, focusing beyond just distinguishing between human and bot counts, a task we leave to the marketing/product department.

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