Blog statistics addiction

I have written about addiction before in this blog, and now I have to admit that I, too, am becoming an addict - to my own blog statistics. These last few weeks, I have checked them almost every single day (sometimes more than once), and I often spend several minutes trying to figure out what it is I am looking at. A while back this was very difficult, because there seemed to be something wrong with the hit counter (I kept getting lots and lots of 8 hit-peaks, at irregular intervals. First I thought these were crawler visits, then I realised that is was far more likely that each group of eight was actually a single hit, but it still made it very difficult to distinguish any patterns), but now, hopefully, the hit counter is working as it should again.
Basically, I get three types of hits.
1) Friends, family and colleagues who will drop by every once in a while to read what I am writing (I know this because they sometimes comment on my entries in person);
2) Companies that scour the internet for clients and visit blog sites in the hope that the author will return the favour (I have actually done this myself, out of curiosity) and buy their wares;
3) Readers that do not know me or vice versa.
- any of which can be one-offs, repeating visitors, or regular readers.

Personally, I am most interested in the last category of readers. That is also why my entries are usually quite general; they are written so that as to make some kind to any reader, not just people who know me. And of this huge pool of possible readers, I am of course most interested to know what is it that captures people's initial attention, and what makes them come back.

To answer the first question, I look at the traffic sources. Most of my hits come from Google searches for specific combinations of words. Some (like "effort + result") are aimed at finding specific content, others are aimed at finding my blog ("surviving + western + civilisation") or at finding specific entries in my blog. Other sources seem to indicate that people have bookmarked a specific entry, and use that as the entry point to my blog. That makes it more difficult to distinguish between entries that are popular for their content, and entries that are only popular because they are certain regular visitors way of accessing the blog, but it is still nice to know that someone found my blog interesting enough to create a favourite or bookmark for it.

Interesting as all of this is (to me, anyway), there is one important thing I would very much like to know, but don't, and that is know how many hits actually resulted in somebody reading the content. The only way to know this is if I get a reaction, but unfortunately, the comments feature does not seem to work properly.
(And just in case you didn't pick up the hint: please try placing a comment or a "like", just to see if the features work).

Laziness and the keyboard

In a bout of laziness, I just had a look at all the draft entries that I started writing but never published, in the hope of finding something I could simply shine up a bit to make it suitable. Unfortunately, none of them are good enough: each would need at lot more work to make them readable. Mostly because they are too ambitious - when optimistic, I attack big items like the search for knowledge or whether there is such a things as objective reality - and also because I believe you should only publish stuff that someone might like to read.

  

Of course, this entry is not all that interesting either. But I have noticed that some of my most popular entries (in terms of numbers of visits) are about blogging, so I am quite curious to see how this entry will fare, in comparison to others.

 

I will keep you posted!

....

As promised (to keep you posted): this has indeed become one of the more popular entries. I think it is safe to say, however, that it is one of my least interesting entries ever. I guess people arrive here while searching for more ergonomic ways to use the computer.

As I spend many hours a day using a keyboard, I can understand that this is real issue, so here is my advice in a nutshell:

• make sure your posture is correct, which means a chair and table that you can adjust to your height
• find the most comfortable position for the keyboard and/or find an ergonomic one
• make a list of frequent actions that are uncomfortable or laborious (often involving the mouse)
• check to see if no keyboard shortcuts exist for these actions already. (You would be surprised at the number of people who use the mouse to click on certain default options that appear in interactive menus (like "do you want to save this file Yes/No"), when all you need do is hit the Return or Enter key).
• if no keyboard shortcuts exist, there are ways to create your own, but this is too much to explain in a simple overview. In any case, many programs (and certainly internet browsers) allow toolbar customisation that can help speed up things. Put links that you use everyday on your desktop, or in your links toolbar (but not at the bottom of a long long list of Favourites, or in a folder that is in another folder in another folder etc.)