Tag: view stats

Snow on the Way

It’s going to snow tonight. Crap. I was going to see if Jen and Harry wanted to go for a drive to look at xmas lights, but now I just want to pull a blanket over my head and hide until the weather clears. I mean, winter officially starts at like 4:00am tomorrow morning. It’s bound to snow eventually. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I did a couple of goofy things with this little bloggie today. This post will serve as a bit of a test for one of them. I added a couple of new share buttons. Bluesky and Threads (and Mastodon? Did I add that one too?) are new, and Tumblr was re-added after being removed at least once. I removed twitter/x as well because fuck that musk prick. Fuck him right in his fucking eye. I tested the Bluesky and Threads buttons and they work. I also set new posts to automatically post to Bluesky. When I publish this literary tome I will see if it worked.

Another change, which is internal and should only be viewable by me, is that I think I hooked up to Google Analytics. I’ve had that option for ages now but I never did it. I am at heart a stats geek, so why didn’t I? It seems like I am too late as my engagement stats (the ones built into wordpress.com) are down something like 70% since they peaked back in February. Allow me to make the same caveat I make every time I mention this page’s stats… I really don’t care about the stats, I am just a numbers nerd and like to mess around with them. Also, and definitely most importantly, being down 70% from a very small, some might say microscopic, number is just another small, microscopic, number, dig it? This is not one of those blogs that sees a gajillion hits an hour. I consider myself lucky when I average one hit an hour and in my experience that would be a lot. In other words, I am in no way interested in drumming up business with insipid brain droppings, dig? Like I said twice before in this post, I just like playing with numbers. I have a Computer Science degree for cripes sake. Numbers are fun. Whatever, I am curious if linking up to Google Analytics a) worked, and b) will show me anything fun. I’ll probably write 100000 posts about it over the next few days (assuming it worked, of course).

All of these changes are internal but they might be a hint that a bloggie shake up is coming, and you know what that means… that means I am probably going to start messing with the theme and the layout. Sometimes Robert just cannot stop himself, you know?

What the hell was I talking about? I can’t remember. Oh yeah, it’s going to snow tonight. Doesn’t that suck? I think that sucks.

Oh well. I am going to click Publish now. Here’s hoping we cross post over to the ol’ Bluesky Social. Wish the bloggie luck……….

I’m Not Complaining, Just Observing

I promise that this post is not me complaining or whining or bitching. I’m just a stats nerd and I notice stuff like this.

I watch the stats for this page. Always have. Back when I was using Blogger (from 11/08 through 12/12) I didn’t have stats available so I signed up for third party apps that kinda sorta let me view stats. One of the reasons I moved off of Blogger and onto WordPress.com was all of the visitor and page view stats.

In March of 2021 my view counts started to grow. I don’t know why, they just did. I always say this and I’ll say it now. When I talk about numbers on this page I am not talking about large numbers. I am not comparing viewer engagement here to any other site. This is not a real site and it’s not meant to pull people in. I tag and stuff, but that’s it. My numbers are teeny tiny compared to real blogs. I only compare my current numbers to my previous numbers. In March of 2021 I went from very few viewers to slightly more than very few viewers. Things grew steadily for a few months, then in February 2022 things started to sort of trend downward again. I don’t know why.

For some reason, unknown to me, last month’s numbers were super low compared to the prior year and a half. It wasn’t the lowest hit count for a month over that time period, but it was close. Similarly, this week my weekly numbers have been super low. I had one good day and every other day has been down to almost nothing. Today’s count right now (4:41pm) is less than what I would have woken up to at this time last year. I don’t know why and I don’t really care. This page is really just for me, you know? I have fun with it even when no one reads any of it. If my numbers were flat zeros (sorta like the film blog) I wouldn’t care.

The really interesting thing for me is, while the page view numbers seem to be evaporating steadily here, the view counts on Flickr have never been higher. I know why, theoretically at least. I am posting tons of stuff to Flickr and I am much more active on that site than I’ve been maybe ever. I joined in 2009 and at that time I was up to my eyeballs in the facebook and maybe up to my chin in the twitter, not to mention being a few months into the original Blogger page. Social media engagement wasn’t really the point of Flickr for me. Today though, Flickr is pretty much it for me as far as social media is concerned. I’m still using instagram a little, but I’m not really engaged with it. I post a pic a day and follow a bunch of photo and guitar centric users and I double tap on things that I see that I like, but mostly I just post the day’s picture and then leave. Over the last six months or so I have been posting photos to Flickr groups like crazy and then following up by viewing everyone else’s posts to those groups (within reason… I am not viewing everything that goes to the 10 Million Photos group, just a tiny fraction) and I have been viewing and faving and following tons of stuff on each day’s explore page. I should leave comments more often, but I never know what to say… sort of like real life, right?

What’s the point of this? There is no point. I post a ton to this page because I enjoy it. I post a ton to Flickr because I enjoy it. If people check my posts out then that’s great. If they don’t then I am still going to post a ton more. It doesn’t matter. I’m just a stats nerd and I feel the need to share my pointless observations. That’s all.

I mean really what it all comes down to is that we should all just prepare ourselves for season three of The Mandalorian, right? This is the way. I have spoken.