It’s been a while since I’ve posted a question and as you might have noticed my posting schedule hasn’t been as regular as it used to be. Partly that’s because I’ve been focussing a lot of my attention on the Dutch version of this site this past year, but there is also another reason: statistics. Yes, I do appreciate everyone who visits my blog, but since the beginning of the year I’ve seen quite a drop in numbers. I still don’t know the reason for this, but compared to last year the numbers were around half of what they were before. It might be that Google has changed some of its algorithms, meaning specific articles aren’t found as easily anymore or maybe because some popular articles have been less relevant, but still it has been something that’s been bothering me a bit. So that made me wonder:
How important are the statistics of your blog to you and have you noticed any changes the last year?
Mildly. I’ve seen a recent drop (a big one) on my blog, but I had no audience for about 10 months when I first started, and I kept going.
So, I guess I’ll keep blogging.
Yeah, it does have to do a lot with how active you are and since I haven’t been around much the English blogs the couple of months I guess that had its effect.
I do check my stats more than is probably needed, though I don’t generally try to analyze the trends too deeply. On a general scale, my site’s traffic is pretty flat compared to last year, and it tends to fluctuate quite a bit, but it’s steady enough for me. I don’t do it for the traffic, I do it because I enjoy it.
I am shocked on how much it dropped on mine, but I basically decided not to pay too much attention to it anymore. Like you say, traffic isn’t the most important, it’s about enjoying it and writing about something you love.
Not really. I haven’t paid any attention to my statistics at the moment. Especially as I’ve been posting a lot less now lately.
I haven’t posted as much either so I guess that has had its effect too.
Never had that much to start with, but I might post one thing that gets a lot of views . I know I’ve not visited as many sites this year as I have in the past couple of years. I suspect, that readers get sidetracked by a variety of things that are hard to account for. Post a racy picture and be amazed at the the eyeballs that will show up.
Yeah, I know that articles get more views than actual reviews, but writing those takes a lot more time, which I don’t always seem to have. Haven’t tried the racy pictures thing, nor am I planning to 😉
I check mine far too often for my own good. Not really analyzing them other than noticing if views are going up or down. Over the last year and a half I’ve been on a fairly steady incline in traffic. For me, it’s largely an indicator of how active I’ve been around the blogosphere. We’re a bit of a petty bunch that way. It’s a visit my site, I’ll visit yours sort of thing. I get it. No problems with that. I try not to be that way and just visit sites because I like them, not out of perceived obligation. I’ve went off on a bit of a tangent, sorry ’bout that. To answer the question, even though I look at my stats almost every day, I don’t act on them or change the content of my site to increase traffic. I just write about what I want to write about and hope its interesting enough for people who decide to stop by.
Yeah, I know what you mean when it comes to visiting other sites…have been doing that less (time simply hasn’t allowed me to do it) and that has had its effect as well. The sites I like I keep visiting whether I get responses back or not.
I spend a lot of time in the stats page, but usually more figuring out what’s bringing people to the site. My site’s grown slowly, but seems to have plateaued this year too. All the ‘records’ are from 2013!
I don’t get too hung up on numbers though – every day about a hundred new film blogs pop up so there’s always more competition 🙁 The biggest change that effected me was censoring all of the incoming search terms. Used to love going through them.
Yeah, there is a lot of competition, but a lot of them disappear too 😉 Yeah, I think it is annoying that you can’t see what people use to find you anymore…always interesting to see that info.
Hahaha – good point. Doing my annual blogrool shuffle and had to knock off a bunch of now-defunct sites!
I sometimes look at old reviews and people who commented and it’s sometimes stunning to see how many aren’t active anymore…
Bloody part-timers!!!!
Lets organise a moment’s silence or something? Would probably make for a good Monday Topic – your favourite dead blog 🙂
Good idea, I’ll ask that question next week!