Google Analytics
If you have a blog or a web site, you should take a look at Google Analytics. It’s a free service for tracking the visitors to your site, and it’s easy to use and works great.
The basic concept is that you add a bit of Javascript to your home page, and that code logs the IP address of each visitor in a database. This data can be viewed through a dashboard-style web console, with many detailed reports available. I added the code yesterday, and in the first few hours I had 30 visitors (dazzling volume, I know) distributed among these locations:
I’ll post some more interesting charts after I collect more data. Not being an A-list blogger, that may take a while. I also want to check out DeepMetrix, a competitor to Google Analytics that was recently acquired by Microsoft.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 10:23 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on September 2, 2006 at 7:38 am Scott wrote:
Amazing. Pretty soon we’ll be able to get their names and count the change in their pockets.
on September 2, 2006 at 12:24 pm Doug wrote:
Yes, it is amazing.
I’ve got more data now, and it’s fun to see specific small towns listed, places where I know I have relatives or friends. I’m going to give it a while to accumulate and then show some more of the reports.
You might check out putting this on your site. I’m not sure what the business case for it would be, but it’s certainly entertaining.
on September 3, 2006 at 7:55 am Scott wrote:
Funny you mention that. Tom Kepler is in the midst of revamping our web site and is already making plans to add this capability. Like you say, it isn’t clear what advantages it might bring, but it will definitely be interesting.