Where is your dot?
Google, what a wonderful thing. They’ve created all sorts of cool tools including one called Google Analytics. If you are the admin of a website you can sign up for Google Analytics and they will provide you with interesting information about the traffic to your site. For example, below is a map of the world personalized for me by Google. All the orange dots on the map represent the locations from which people, including you, are visiting my site. Cool!
Now, before you freak out, let me assuage your fears. Google is not giving me your social security number, bank statements or the keys to your car. But what they do give me is a sense of who is visiting and what you find interesting. This information helps me shape the content I provide. For example, here is a view of the top content on my site.
From this I can see that, other than the home page, people are visiting discography most, which is good for me to know since I have not really spent much time on that part of the site. Maybe I should. Other interesting bits of data…people spend only eighteen seconds on the music page but they never leave the site from that page, which implies that they are clicking on a link to music. I’m happy about that.
Some other things I’ve noticed…it took about a month before someone from Ireland finally noticed that I have a site about Irish music. I guess I have to work on my marketing strategy. Also, I had a dot suddenly appear in the Pacific Ocean one day. I though, ‘hey, turtles from the Galapagos are check’n me out!’. On further inspection it appears to be surfers from Hawaii. Surfers love slip jigs.
So, tell me about your dot! Do you play traditional music? Fife & Drum? Just passing by? Leave a comment and let me know!
Lastly, is anyone willing to fess up to which dot is sending me all the spam about Viagra?
7 COMMENTS
Do you think that, instead of spam, it’s just brilliantly targeted marketing?
…just kidding…
By the way, I use RSS (thank you for using it) and don’t necessarily come in the front door or through Google… I jump straight into the article or download.
‘Brilliantly targeted marketing’? I had not looked at it like that but maybe you’re on to something.
More importantly, I am happy to hear that you are using RSS. It is really a great way to keep track of sites. My metrics from Google include RSS unless you click through to the article. I had shut off the RSS feed for comments but have been debating if that was a bad idea. Any thoughts on this?
Dear traditional music blogger:
Does your Irish flute ever droop just when you need it to perform? If so, then consider ViagraValveBalm. It’s just the tonic to get your head joint back in the groove!
I meant to say ‘my metrics from Google do NOT include RSS’…
Ok, Viagra is definitely getting more mileage out of this post than if I had actually let the spam through.
Try turning comments on through RSS and let’s see what it’s like…
You can always turn it back off…