Thursday, August 12, 2010

Numbers

I love Google Analytics. So so much. It's not so much I'm getting caught up on the numbers. I'm happy blogging into the void, with only my mom checking up on the page once a month. But it's so much nicer to know that the header isn't being enjoyed by just me and that someone actually reads the words that I write whether they're exceedingly random or delicately written. I know I've got Rena and Vita but there's something so comforting to see the Analytics page look like this (click on the pictures and they get bigger):

Isn't it exciting that we get 10-30 views per day? I know it's not The Hayleylujah Chorus, but I think this, all of this *gestures wildly*, is awesome.

And now you shall see the story of our blog through a series of charts (*cough* two), graphs and zig zag lines.
From May 6th (our Google Analytics anniversary) to today:
Can you believe we've had 943 different people at least glance at our page? And yes, a few of those people were me at different computers, but still, that's a lot of people. A lot of people. Almost 1000 people. Holy crap.

This next screenshot is comparing the last month (July 12-August 12) to the same time last year. As you can see, our popularity has increased in the last 12 months:

                                     
And that's that. Do you love Analytics, too?

Deep Post Script Note:
The main thing I learned last BEDA, not to get all 'this is what I learned from that experience' on you, is that blogging is a community thing. I'm always reading blogs and every so often I'll come across something like "How to Increase Your Pageviews" or "How to Turn Readers Into Commenters" and it seems like there are a lot of people out there who blog for attention.

And maybe there's a part of my subconscious that wants strangers to care about my life and opinions and that is why I blog but on a conscious level I do it because I love to write and I love feeling connected to other people. I love sharing, maybe that's a slight attention thing, but I also love to listen and read.

What I'm trying to say is that I think if you see blogging as a way to make people like and remember you, you've already failed. If you want people to care about what you write in your blog, you have to care about what they write in their blogs. If you want people to comment on your blog, you should comment on other people's blogs. I don't think it's about spotlight and attention; I think it's about connectedness and community.

So although I'm happy the charts above, I'm not getting hung up on it...
But still... squee!!

1 comment:

Vita said...

SQUEE indeed! That's awesome. I agree; I don't blog to get famous (I honestly can't name one blogger who is famous in other realms of the internet besides blogging-land) but it is nice to know that somebody cares, even if it's just a little teeny bit.