Why Is Google Analytics A Boon And A Curse? – The Cry Of A Small Pond Blogger

by Stu Andrews on March 18, 2009

in Words

Ha ha. That’ll learn me. Not five minutes after posting this, Kieron of the most excellent Rock Paper Shotgun just uber-pimped Space Office Fight.

I am no longer sad. Someone should wipe the smile off my face.

Here’s my Google Analytics graph for the last month (ish):

Google Analytics - Stu's Traffic

Impressive huh?

Ahem.

I’ve been doing this (blogging) for a while now. Dev Dawn started back in August 2005. So this August will be four years.

Sure, that’s not very long compared to some, but it’s long enough. I’m still here. Still going.

Google Analytics is both a Boon and a Curse.

Boon – Seriously, you need to know this stuff about your blog. And Google Analytics is free. It tells you most everything a little blogger could want to know.

Curse – Have you seen the above graph? One spike. And we’re not talking about thousands here either. The spike is a StumbleUpon hit parade that took me to just under a thousand visits that day. Every other day ranges around the five to ten visits mark. Except there’s another bump when I released Space Office Fight, up to around seventy visits.

I’ve read Problogger and other wisdom on how to be a success at blogging.

I think I am a success because I write about what I’m doing, and I love doing it.

But I’m not a success in the terms that matter on a different level. Numbers. Visitors. Other people listening to you.

So what am I saying? Not a great deal. I’m a bit sad I guess. I’ve written some decent content over the past few months, released software, I’ve created a game and pimped it to the best of my ability (which needs to get much better, obviously).

Sometimes you want to see some concrete evidence of “the numbers” success. This is just one of those moments.

It is well.


Related posts:

  1. Simple Bug/Feature Tracking With Google Docs
  2. Stu Talk #6 – Hi! I’m Stu Andrews, And I’m A Software Dev At Google!
  3. 5 Reasons I Hate Good Blogging

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Corvus March 18, 2009 at 9:38 am  (Quote)

Those of us who typically only view your blog via RSS don’t help those numbers either. Do you also use Statcounter to track your unwatched (or should that be unwashed?) RSS masses?

Reply

Stu March 18, 2009 at 9:46 am  (Quote)

Corvus: Those of us who typically only view your blog via RSS don’t help those numbers either. Do you also use Statcounter to track your unwatched (or should that be unwashed?) RSS masses?

Ohh. No, haven’t been introduced to Statcounter. Will check it out.

Thanks Corvus!

Reply

Corvus March 18, 2009 at 10:10 am  (Quote)

Not Statcounter. Feedburner. Sheesh. Brain, meet comment. Comment, meet brain.

Reply

Stu March 18, 2009 at 10:17 am  (Quote)

Corvus: Not Statcounter. Feedburner. Sheesh. Brain, meet comment. Comment, meet brain.

Ha ha. Well excellent on the StatCounter info anyway. Yeah, have got Feedburner kicking away.

To be truthful, kind of forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder!

Reply

Leave a Comment