Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
II
Be aware going in that blogging statistics, like blogging itself, can consume dozens or hundreds of
hours of your time with little objective return for your effort. Your statistics work will probably
improve your blog traffic—but if that traffic isn't doing anything concrete for the rest of your life,
you might need to downscale your statistical investigations as well as your overall effort to make it
sustainable for you.
In most cases, you should look after yourself first, your blog second, and your blog statistics third (and
money fourth, at least until you're ready to quit your day job); it's better all around in the long run.
Stats on Your WordPress Administration Page
Every time you log in to the Administration page of a WordPress.com blog, or a WordPress.org blog
with the Stats plug-in, you see a statistics display like the one shown in Figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1
WordPress
stats greet
you every
time you
log in.
In Figure 8.1, you can see—if you look very closely—a peak in visits a few days before the day of
the snap. In this case, the peak is easily explained.
The subject of the blog, Google Voice Daily, is Google's offering for telephone management, Google
Voice. The most recent posting to the blog was put up the day before the highest recent peak. It
was on the topic of the responses by Apple, AT&T, and Google to a U.S. Federal Communications
