Tag: visits

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.

Road Trip

We’re about half a work day away from the weekend. Not just any weekend, but the first weekend where everyone in the house is fully vaccinated. Tonight there’s some new Marvel to watch. Will Sam take up the mantle of Captain America? I think so. If he doesn’t, will Bucky? Will the faux Cap become USAgent or will he end up taking a dirt nap? Part of me expects the latter.

Tomorrow there is a visit on the books as well as time for errands and hopefully a little music. Errands might include an oil change for one of the cars and maybe a stop at Best Buy? More likely I’ll order something from Best Buy. I don’t think I can deal with actually walking into a big box store yet.

Then there is Sunday. What to do about Sunday?

Well… both cars will have been serviced… we’re vaccinated… road trip? The first road trip in over a year? Bellana is just a few hours away in Vermont… might we head up for a visit?

I would not have had a problem with a long drive like that even at the worst of the Covid. I would just fill up the gas tank while wearing a mask and latex gloves, bring along a great big pile of snacks (via instacart), and go. If nature called I would pull off the road, find a tree, and take care of business. Jen, however, would not have had that nature calling luxury and there is no way we would go into a store or a gas station to do what needed to be done. That’s why long drives were off the table.

Now? I think we’d be okay going into a gas station to use a rest room. I don’t think we’d be happy about the situation, but if we’re masked up I think we can handle the weirdness.

Road trip to Vermont?

See Bellana for the first time in months?

There are still details to be worked out but… it could happen.

Am I actually making plans? I forgot what that felt like.

Hypocrisy Continued

Call this one hypocrisy continued, or maybe SEO kinda works.

I’m referencing something like three older posts here, but to sum up:  I honestly do not care about how many hits this page gets, but I started using a couple of simple Search Engine Optimization techniques recently and it seems like it works.  Also, my job title is programmer/analyst and I do enjoy getting wrapped up in statistics, even when they are meaningless and show that I’m a hypocrite.

As previously mentioned more than a couple of (dozen, probably) times, when I first started blogging (on Google’s Blogger, 2008-2012) I was posting multiple times a day.  I then, for absolutely no reason, moved over to wordpress.com (2012-2016) and continued my ridiculous posting habits.  Next I moved to medium.com (2016-2017) and I think the frequency of posts started dropping before opening up a new wordpress.com account (2017-present).  At first I was posting a lot but it dwindled considerably over time until last June 1st when I decided I was going to post every damn day again, for literally no reason.  That has turned into multiple times a day, just like it was in the beginning.

While I was using the original wordpress account I started tagging posts.  I don’t remember why or when exactly but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  At some point, possibly when I started this account, I started using post categories as well.  As my interest dwindled between lets say September 2017 and May 2019 I stopped tagging and categorizing and just posted.  After reading a reddit post on SEO a couple of weeks ago I went back to categories and tags.

Just focusing on the current wordpress account, when I look at the numbers from the start (March 2017) there was a pretty small but steady stream of hits for the first few months.  As I started losing interest, the hits went down considerably.  The numbers in the Spring of 2019 were down something like 75% from the numbers in Spring 2017 (and lets not forget, 0.25 * 4 = 1, m’kay?  We aren’t talking about lots of hits here.  Not even close).

Last June when I started posting regularly (and writing longer posts, not just throwing up random pictures) the numbers went up again.  By the end of the summer they were back to where they were at the start.  Something odd happened in October though.  I had one post (I don’t remember what it was, but it was just a random picture) got a ton of hits.  There was one day where my numbers skyrocketed (again, for me skyrocketing doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for let’s say Mashable, or the New York Times, or any real site that isn’t just some stupid fat putz mouthing off).  The counts for October 2019 were the highest they had been since the account was created.

Two days ago January 2020 passed October 2019.  There are still 2+ days to go this month and I’m already quite a bit over that previous high.  Again, before you start thinking ol’ Robbie should monetize or any bullshit like that, we’re only slightly above single digit numbers here, m’kay?  Never lose site of that.  It’s pretty important.

So there I was, looking at the Stats and Insights page (wordpress.com users know what I’m talking about) and seeing the current month as my most viewed month in almost three years.  Cool!  Then I thought to myself, I wonder how the numbers on the first wordpress.com account looked.  I logged out and tried to log back in as the original user.  I couldn’t remember the original user’s email address (I don’t use my main personal email address for any of my wordpress.com accounts).  I had to dig through my email to try and find the right user name (I don’t use my main email address, but I do forward all emails from the burner accounts to my main email, so they were there for me to dig out).  Once I found it I had to trudge through the depths of my pea brain’s memory to find the password.  I found that too, eventually.  No need to reset it.

Two things surprised me.  First, despite not having touched that account since 2016 it still gets occasional hits.  Not a lot, just a couple each month.  I didn’t expect that though it does make sense as I can see some posts that were ported from that page to this one still get hit here.  Whatever.  Second, the numbers from 2012-2016 weren’t all that different from my numbers over the last seven months.  On average they were higher back then, but not too much higher.  There were outliers though.  January 2020 is the highest hit count for any month on the current account.  There were 4-5 months on the old account where the hits spiked in a gigantic way.  We’re talking triple the hits we’re seeing today.  More than triple.

The moral of the story is, sure it’s fun to see the numbers on this page growing a little… but don’t get cocky, kid.

QED.