Analytics

Google are the best analytics company in the world today. It's how they can serve the right results for your search, and how they make money by placing the correct adverts next to your search. The key to good analytics? Mine a huuuuge amount of data, and analyse it properly. Some pretty sophisticated algorithms are involved. And they're always collecting more and more data, which has people worried about their privacy, though those who are worried should simply just stop using google as their search engine, and stop using other google products like gmail and the like. But that's a different story.

Google also own Blogger, and own YouTube, which again makes it easy for them to collect large amounts of analytics data and effectively monetise it. But it also means users of these sites get an incredible amount of statistical goodness as well, if they choose to accept it. For example, my videos on youtube have been watched more than 17,000 times, and I can tell that Dua Yastasheer is more popular than the kasida. Also I have demographic viewing info for males and females (roughly 50-50 split), and by country (top 7 countries: US, UK, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Tanzania & Mauritius).

What's interesting is that only now have I noticed that you can do the same for this blog. Normally, I wouldn't give that much thought, because whilst I want people to benefit from my videos as much as possible, in which case many viewings is ostensibly a positive, this is a semi-private collection of musings and oddments, so quantity matters not so much.

However, one stat did catch my eye - visitors from abroad. It's a consequence of the net that the world is now a lot smaller, and this is no less here. The majority of my hits are from the UK, and most are probably down to myself, but I have had some visits from the US (I think I know who that is), from Australia (ditto), from the Ukraine (no idea) and from Norway (not a clue who that is). All visitors are welcome, and I hope that my writings are of value to any and all that stumble across my little corner of the web.

It is too easy to get absorbed (and self absorbed) with the analytics of how many hits I get, or the most popular posts on this blog, so I won't bother with all that. I don't see myself using this feature more than once every three months, purely out of curiosity. I think it is very cool though, and if you have a blogger account, check it out - you might be fascinated by what you get. If you don't, check out your settings - your provider might have the same feature.