An analytical obsession

I set up a Google Analytics account years ago, sometime around 2004 when it was first released. I hadn’t logged in for at least two years, but dusted it off last week for a non-blog related project. It turns out that while I have been ignoring Google, Google has dutifully been tracking traffic at ajmatt blog.

ajmatt blog traffic is much more interesting than the old ajmatt photo gallery traffic, and the new version of Google Analytics compiles more complex statistics. Now I can see not only page counts and geographic statistics, but how people get here.

For instance, people can find me on Google—the search “allegra hartley” (sans quotes) yields this blog on page 2. Random people found old posts while looking for information on “gi joe movie 2009” and “ned nickerson.” Lots of people are interested in the correct pronunciation of assuage—someone managed to find us by searching “my usage was correct.”

And when we link to other blogs, their readers come visit us. It took an hour of digging, but we finally figured out a bunch of traffic came from this site because of this entry by Matt.

So I’m horrified by this revelation, even though I (Ms. “Web 2.0 is the best thing ever”) knew all of this was possible, and how it worked. But I still had this cocoon of denial that my blog entries were only read by 10 people I know really well, and most of whom I am related to.

To temper the hysteria, Matt’s reaction to the statistics was: “Oh look. We’re neck and neck for the most viewed page.”

Ms. Web 2.0 is married to Mr. Competitive.

In conclusion, if you don’t have it already, put some kind of tracking on your blog. It’s scary and inspiring, all at once.

Now I’m off to figure out feedburner, so I can find out how many people are reading without visiting (e.g. in Google Reader). In the meantime, I’m watching your Google keywords!