Blogging about blogging

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Since I love Google Analytics and I was curious on how many visitors I had to my blog, I set up a GA account for my blog. The results I see assure that I am not Joel Spolsky. I noticed that a fresh grad working with me gets a higher traffic to her blog. That's what a link on her blog on how much the content is worth.

The results on GA indicated an interesting information.
If you blog about a current affair (like song release of Sivaji- the movie), there is a chance that your blog may get some new visitors. I got just one. On other days, I get the usual co-workers and ex-coworkers visiting my blog.
It is essential that the blog must be current. I blogged about the dark matter after reading about it on Slash Dot and Time magazine. My blog was about this article and Rig Veda. I had a surprise visitor who used the keywords for which my blog appears 3rd in the results.

Well, I do not write for eye-balls. I write because it is one way scratching my brain itch. After I write about what I wanted write, the thought disappears and doesn't bother me any more. It is just like writing a letter to God about your sorrows to feel better.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Please do keep posting. I'm regular reader of your blog and your posts have been interesting.

Btw, I use RSS feed (RSSOwl) to read your posts and I'm not sure if that would count as a hit.
2:09 PM
Sridhar said…
If RSSOwl uses a browser to render the content and if javascript is enabled, it does count in Google Analytics.
You are probably the only returning visitor who hits the pages directly (no referrer) and are from California.
4:27 PM
Anonymous said…
Yes. Although I sit in Hyderabad, my prox server is at California. So I do contribute to the hit count :)
7:53 PM
Anonymous said…
Actually there are so many factors that influence the hits. A lots to list out. Some we might not even be aware of.
1. Blog roll ( most influential factor)
2. Feeds/RSS
3. Comments on other blogs( you dont know what wonders it can make)
4. Digg and Slash dot as you told.
Ofcourse the content matters a lot. Current affairs will yeild a lot of traffic. Say Bob Woolmer's death or any hot happening. One more thing which yeilds traffic for most of the time is FAT Finger SEO. i.e your spelling mistakes.
Bob Wolmer instead of Bob woolmer
Gamil instead og Gmail.
These are not actually spelling mistakes, but when you type you tend to mispell the words. Just visit Gamil.com you will know
10:49 AM
Sridhar said…
I do not know to drive traffic to my blog when people mis-spell. In some cases, the traffic is not the intended one (as with the gamil example you had given). I do agree that if we can add words with incorrect spelling somewhere in the meta, you might get people. But the recent one I heard about meta is, it has all kinds of junk and search engines tend to ignore them.

I do not post blogs with incorrect spelling. I make sure every red underline in the text area control is checked before I post.
5:52 PM
Anonymous said…
I am not telling that we should do all these things to drive traffic. What i meant is people do these things to drive traffic. If the content is good, automatically it will drive the traffic in. Some of these are of course Black hat SEOs
10:54 PM
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