Monday, June 15, 2009

Google Analytics: Chasing Readers

Last week, while meandering through my Blogger account settings, I found a link to sign up for Google Analytics. I gave it a try. I was surprised by the depth and breadth of data that Google Analytics could give me about who visits my blogs and how they get there (and how long they stay). The most surprising thing, though, was that someone out there is actually reading my blogs! Since I don't think my mother is visiting this blog twice a day, every day, there must be a few other surfers out there who've found my stuff. A few bloggers have even included my other Logophilius blog in their blogrolls. Yeah for me!

Google Analytics also shows what search terms a person who found my blog put in before they ended up here. As it turns out, a lot of people are still wondering about Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" lyrics, because a lot of people land in this blog on my blog post about "Chasing Cars" after a Google search. (And now that I've mentioned "Chasing Cars" [three times!] in this post, some of those surfers will find their way to this post, too, and hopefully follow the link to the original post above.)

That's kind of sad, though. I was hoping that the less pedestrian of my posts — like my review of Man Without a Country, or my experiences with Henoch-Schönlein Purpura, or even the weekend I spent figuring out how to work my camera — would be more attractive than a piddling discussion of some song lyrics.

Looking back, though, the greatest portion of my blog posts are pedestrian. Maybe you should jump over to Logophilius to find something with more teeth.

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