Thursday, September 16

Sadly, I'm never as cool as I think I am.

Do you want to hear a story?

You know you do.

This is a funny story. It's also a mortifying story. And it's a little sad too.

Once upon a time I had a blog. I still do, in fact. I installed Google Analytics on said blog, and enjoyed looking at all the lovely numbers trickle in. How many people are visiting from Idaho? How many minutes were spent on my post on poop? What color are most of my visitors wearing? (Kidding, Google is smart, but not that smart.)

Eventually weird things started happening. I was getting an inordinate amount of traffic from a doctor blog and a fashion blog. I wrote a post about it. I ruminated on it for a long freaking time. I couldn't solve the mystery of the referral traffic.

I also noticed that Google Analytics would show posts written by my sister (a doctor) and Shea (a fashionista) as ones read on my site. "Strange," I thought to myself, "People must really like to click to Laura and Shea's blog from mine!"

And a couple of months ago, my traffic started gradually picking up. "Man," I thought, "I must be getting to be a pretty awesome blogger."

WRONG.

A couple weeks ago, Victoria started complaining about traffic from Marie--some of Marie's posts were showing up! This is where I die. So mortified. So embarassed.

I finally realized something. Apparently, I'm not an html wizard. I'm an html muggle.

Victoria and I design blogs using a basic template--and on several occasions we've used our blogs as starting points. Laura's. Shea's. Marie's. Which means the code that Google Analytics uses was reporting the stats for our blogs AND their blogs.

Funny that I've been living a blog lie. Mortifying that it took me so long to figure out. And sad that I'm the awkward kid who thinks she has hundreds of friends, but is wrong. Really, I have tens of friends. Which is still pretty awesome.

Whoops! I'm really glad it got sorted out. My code is removed from Laura and Shea and I can know look at my data in peace--and know that is JUST mine. I guess I can trust Google after all.

9 comments:

  1. that is so funny! you aren't a blog loser! Reading here in California :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am in a plane at 30,000 feet reading your blog. that makes you pretty darn cool. I wonder how Google Analytic will document that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha! You hadn't told me the part about seeing mine and Shea's posts listed in your Analytics. I think I'm moving from Team Rachel-Was-A-Little-Confused to Team Rachel-Should've-Figured-That-Out

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm on Team Rachel-Was-A-Little-Confused because I sure didn't figure it out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ahhh! too funny, but i think you are a fabulous blogger anyways!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. people who read very few blogs but who *always* read yours should be more heavily weighted in the analyses...therefore I'm worth a whole heap! And I applaud your decision to no longer live a lie, even if it was accidental.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's ok. For a while there, I was getting tons of hits from a nearby town and it was starting to weird me out. Did I need to worry about a stalker??

    Then I realized that the hits were from me because I go to my blog to log into blogger. Silly silly me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. woop woop! I read your blog and stalk it daily- that counts! I also think this post was extremely funny- html muggle heh heh heh :)

    ReplyDelete

A comment? For me? You shouldn't have. But please do.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...