Ask HN: Do you use analytics on your personal blog/site? Why?

3 points by ilmiont 5 years ago | 7 comments

I've been thinking for a while about relaunching a personal site (abandoned in 2017, offline since 2018) and would like to go JavaScript-less.

Previous personal sites have always included some kind of analytics/view counting system and I'd originally intended to do so on the new site.

Yet thinking about it... I really don't know why I care how many people read an article, or whether that data is of any use to me. (It really would be only view counts that I'd collect.)

Which got we wondering... do you collect analytics (whether full-blown GA or just a per-page view count log), and what real value does that data provide to you?

I've decided against it for my new site but am now analysing (ahem) why I wanted it in the past, and if there's anything I'm missing...

protoduction 5 years ago |

My personal site is HTML/CSS only, but I decided to add a privacy-ok simple analytics solution to it [1]. So now it does have some JS on it, but I can live with its <1KB size. By deferring it it's just as fast as before.

I really only use it as a view counter - seeing that there are actually a few readers motivates me.

[1]: https://plausible.io

Sodaware 5 years ago |

I use goaccess for analysing my server logs and that's it. I look for pages that are popular, traffic spikes, and any referrals that stand out. There is so much referrer spam these days that it takes a while to clean things up to the point where it's useful.

zzo38computer 5 years ago |

I do have logs on the server (although the data in the logs is reduced when a "DNT:1" header is present). I do not use any client side analytics at all, and do not want to.

Often I just have plain text files, and direct downloads for other stuff anyways; however, comments can be useful, and if someone has comments, I do have a NNTP server which can be used for discussions about these things.

XCSme 5 years ago |

I think it depends a lot on what your goal is with the personal blog/site. If you want to improve it or gain attention, then analytics will be useful, but if you just want to have it for purely personal reasons than analytics might not help with your goal.

Though, it is still nice when you post an article to know how many people actually read it, but I think this could also be solved by adding a comment section.

mraza007 5 years ago |

I use Google Analytics. Looking at analytics helps me stay motivated as it shows people are actually reading my content

bwip 5 years ago |

My personal site is html/css only, no js or other frameworks on the pages. I don't count page views but can see bandwidth usage on the free firebase instance I use for it (firebase deploy from cli is my lazy method of pushing).

muzani 5 years ago |

Personal, no. Yes for everything else.

However, I love seeing feedback and where they come from. I have one project in my resume, and it's become analytics for who actually goes through the resume and when. I saw someone referred from a YC job applicant management dashboard from there, so I know Y Combinator's job network gets good read on my resume at least.

I also noticed that rejections come soon after certain people view my profile on LinkedIn or certain articles, so it's interesting to note what kind of impressions people have of me.