I can’t help it. Blog and website stats simultaneously satisfy my nosy instincts while also feeding the complex mix of insecurity and ego that propels most journalists into the business.
It started small. I looked at my Typepad stats once or twice a week, and saw how many page views I got. Then I started to look at ‘average daily’ stats, and referral pages, and it was a download slope from there.
Before long, the Typepad stats weren’t enough to keep me going. I had to install Google Analytics. Now I could see search terms that drove visitors to the site, how many people looked at each specific page, and how many times. I could even identify the network location of visitors, and got a thrill if I saw someone from the BBC or News International was on the blog, while comparing which PR agencies and publishing companies were regular visitors.
For a while, it was enough. I’d have a look at Analytics once or twice a week. Everything was cool. Under control.
But a little voice in my head demanded to know more. So I knew that three people using a certain ISP visited the blog on a specific day, but who were they? What did they want? When someone arrived at the blog after searching for “Sally Whittle blog” I’d immediately wonder why they wanted to know about my blog. Maybe it was a potential client, or maybe it was someone who secretly wanted to sue me for something. Or I suppose it could just be someone, like, reading the blog. But how could I know for sure?
So perhaps it was inevitable I’d end up with Statcounter then Sitemeter. It’s free and it tells you just about everything you never needed to know about every single visitor to a site, short of their shoe size. Individual IP addresses, locations, time and date of visit, exit and entry points, referring pages – the whole shebang. And of course, as all fellow paranoid freaks know (even if you pretend not to), a quick examination of an email from someone reveals their IP address.
So now I know who hits the site, when, how often and for how long.
Obviously this knowledge makes me no happier or more content than the blind ignorance of the early years. Because now I’m forever thinking: “Why did that person view that page 50 times??” or “They only stayed for 10 seconds. Harumph. You can’t possibly appreciate the subtle humour of that post in ten seconds. Loser. I never liked him.”
I’m going to bet 50 quid I’m not the only one, though. I think we should have a support group or something. With rich tea biscuits and big urns of tea, a safe place where we can share confessions of how we’ve set up Google alerts and reverse-engineered IP addresses. It’s a disease, you know.






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