I use a system called Blogger to operate my blogs. It's owned by Google, so it integrates well with Googles advertising system, pictures, YouTube... all the various services run by Google basically, so it just makes everything a bit slicker.
One thing however I don't quite get is statistics.
You see, Blogger tells me how many people visit my website. According to Blogger, I've had just over 140,000 visits since the blog started, and over 33,000 of them in the last month (so, very roughly, about a quarter of them)
But Google already has its own statistics piece of software, called Analytics, which will be familiar to pretty much anyone who operates a website.
According to Analytics, I've just passed 7,000 views of my blog, with 315 of them in the last month, which is about 5% of the views. Bearing mind I started this blog almost two years ago (apparently my first blog was on the 3rd of September 2012 - maybe I need to plan something for my anniversary!), that would mean that on average I get around 300 views a month, which seems more logical. As much as I'd love to believe Bloggers statistics, I do feel that they may be a little optimistic.
Why the huge difference? Well I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's to do with spiders.
Wait!!! Not the scary version with eight legs, but instead these are little computer programs that basically wander around the Internet checking for updates. Websites like Google use spiders to make sure that they're up to date and that a web page hasn't changed without their knowledge.
On Blogger, these spiders also post a hell of a lot of spam messages. Luckily Blogger catches them and hides them away so they don't get in the way.
Nevertheless, thank you to every person who does visit my blog, it's much appreciated.
I am going to mention the Travelling Book Project (because it's my project!), as I write this there are 35 hours left to fund the project, and we've reached 46% of the target. Not to say that this isn't great - it is, and it's paid for the website, and it's paid for 20-25 books to be sent out, I was out buying a pile of journals this morning - but there is still time to donate if you'd like to, or to mention the project to your social circles to raise awareness. If you would like to support the project please get over to https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-travelling-book-project asap, anything is greatly appreciated. If you've managed to evade the many many mentions I've made of the scheme in the past month, head over to the project website at http://www.travellingbook.eu/ to find out what it is. We now have a forum on the website too so feel free to drop by and say hi.
What I like to do is average the two, and double it and then add a few more, I know it is not accurate, but it sounds good, and I blog to improve my self esteem.
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