Google Analytics

A while back one of the bloggers I followed did a post about the stats she was collecting on her blog, through some software that tracks who reads it. I thought it was interesting, so decided to do the same, signing myself up for Google's free package, called Google Analytics (GA).

Now before you all panic and think I'm out to stalk you (or something equally ridiculous), remember that most sites you visit (I'm talking non-blog sites now) track data. That's partially what cookies are used for. It's just that you're not aware of it, and so it doesn't bother you.

You'll be pleased to know that the free version of GA does protect your privacy in that it doesn't tell me who you are. It does, however, tell me what city you're from, how long you stay on my blog, and how many pages you read. If you return to my blog, it also records that data (although that is a more general piece of info - it's not linked to you specifically, just that x number of people returned y number of times).

What I was particularly interested to learn was that there are two regular readers who use a French language browser (I'm not sure whether their browser translates it for them, or whether they read it in English). What was more amazing is that they each read about 3 pages every time they visit (most people only read 1 page per time), and that they spend about 10 minutes on the blog each time they visit (most people spend less than a minute). That's incredible!!! I only know one person who might be using a French browser, and I doubt she would be taking 10 minutes to read that amount of info from my blog, so I seriously doubt it would be her.

So, all of this begs the question: if I've just described you, who are you????? What do you find so fascinating about the details of my little life that you keep returning here? Are you just using my blog to practice your English (which is fine with me), or is there something else that keeps you coming back? I'm not saying 'go away', please don't misunderstand me! I'm just intrigued that you find my musings sufficiently worthy of a return visit, so I'd like to know more about you.

I'm sure that a lot of hits are from people who are just randomly trawling through Blogger, hitting on that 'Next blog' button. I'm sure that they will never return this way. As I've only been tracking the blog for about 3 weeks now, I don't really have a lot of data to go on. Still, it is fascinating.

Amatomu is the other site I've been using to track my blog. Amatomu is primarily a site where all registered SA blogs are listed and ranked (today my ranking was 843... I don't know how many are registered, but Nellie's was ranked 2000-and-something, so I would guess quite a few) based on the number of people who read them. From Amatomu I've learnt (no surprises here) that the more I blog, the more people will visit and read my blog. I've also learnt that when I talk about deep, heavy, meaningful stuff, people stop visiting. I guess that's to be expected - folk read blogs as a distraction, a bit of fun, so reading something heavy is not their cup of tea.

From all this, I'm sure some of you will be thinking that now I'm going to start writing to my audience - targeting my writing at the style that will attract more people to my blog. I really hope I never do that. Of course, it's a temptation, but this blog is meant to be a kind of journal for me, and a kind of news bulletin for friends & family around the world, so I hope I can keep it that way.

Anyway, I really need to get to that packing now, and I am now DESPERATE for that cup of tea... so, I will detangle myself from 'Nicole world' (as G calls it), and get back to real life.