Google Anyone?

Google Analytics.  The indispensable tool that helps bloggers like myself understand their readership.  With Google Analytics, I have access to statistics about my page that I can use to fine tune things like content and writing skills. 

Google analytics provides equal amounts of useful and useless information (who cares how many visitors use Firefox as their browser?).  The weekly report tells me which towns are reading which posts, how long they remain on the page and on the site, which other posts they read, if any, as well as whether they came to the blog directly or used a search engine. 

At the very least, it is fun to know which topics are popular and unpopular, and which ones will draw the most ire from folks.  And, although it isn’t very useful, it’s interesting to know who reads and who just clicks around.

I’ve been using Google analytics for about 6 months and I’ve discovered some astonishing (and not so) information about Tenorboy Journal.

• My most popular posts are about pain and suffering.  Are my readers really into watching me suffer?  Apparently so.  Rock on, my friends.
• Second most popular posts are holiday-related stuff, you know the “what-we-did-on-Christmas” posts.
• The least popular posts are the informational articles.  When I demonstrate my expertise on any given subject on any given day, y’all don’t like it.  Too bad for you, no? 
• Monday is a bad day to post.  Items that are posted on Mondays get little to no attention.  But, I didn’t start blogging to get attention. (I didn’t??) No, I didn’t.  Regardless, the lack of interest in  Monday is in itself … interesting.
• People from my hometown are regular readers.  People from my current town don’t read it at all.  Oh, sure they click on it and click off, just to be polite, but how much can you actually read when you spend an average of 5 seconds on a page?  Oh, well.   
• I have a large readership overseas.  Maybe I should apply for a job in Japan.  Are they hiring bloggers???
• No one reads the posts in which I keep a close guard on my attitude and vocabulary.  The more “me” I am, the more popular the post (more readers), and the longer people stay on the blog before they exit.  Unfortunately, I am not always able to unleash the full “me.”   Some people would be offended (*GASP!*).  Perhaps I could be me in Japan??

What, then, should I do with this information?

Darned if I know

… Later.