What if I built a blog and nobody came? Would I care? Now I don’t. Notice, that is. Care, maybe…
Let me back up. For years, I’ve tracked site visits. I could tell where you came from, what you’d searched for, how long you stuck around, which pages you’d viewed, etc.
Last week I turned it off.
Counters use third-party tracking cookies that let someone track you all over the web. I don’t want to be a part of that.1This was part of the reason I removed the Twitter and Facebook widgets from my sidebar. As a benefit, removing all this stuff speeds up my blog.
You’re here and reading this and that’s good enough.
I won’t know unless you tell me — and neither will anyone else.
- 1This was part of the reason I removed the Twitter and Facebook widgets from my sidebar. As a benefit, removing all this stuff speeds up my blog.
4 responses to “What If I Built a Blog and Nobody Came…”
I had a great conversation about this very topic recently. So many people preach that in social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) that you should give without expectation of reciprocation, but on blogs, we post and then we click refresh every 7 seconds to see if anyone is reading our epic thoughts.
But should we?
I don’t think so. When I created both of my blogs, I really wanted people to see them, but in the end they’re my thoughts: (Schnikism.com) and what I see in the world: (schnik.it) – I found it interesting that when I stopped watching who was coming to my blog, I started writing a little more openly. I started thinking more about the content and not who I was trying to reach. I think those who want to read/see/follow your stuff will find it organically. Right?
Let’s start the movement to kill SEO! ;-)
There are many reasons to blog. I’ve just eliminated one of them: page views.
I don’t know what impact this has on my SEO. Google, through Feedburner, knows when I publish. Google knows when people visit after searching on Google. Because I’ve removed Google Analytics, Google no longer gets to see how many people come from other sources, how long they stay, etc.
I just get tired of leaking data every time I visit another web site. Now, Facebook and Twitter can’t see who visits because I’ve removed their widgets. And WordPress Stats, which uses a QuantCast tracking cookie, can’t see either.
Who am I fooling? If I was so concerned about SEO, I wouldn’t post so many pictures of the sky. :-D
Hello! from Belfast, Northern Ireland I’m loving your pictures of the sky!!! You are not the only one who appreciates them! I found your blog when looking for the word memory on g**gle? I found an old post and I navigated to your home, I’m glad I did!
Keep up the good work Blogan and maybe write the word memory more often!-who doesn’t want a better memory after all!?
Thanks! You must have discovered my posts on memory maps. Those were fun.
I’m glad you like my sky shots. I took some more yesterday evening, but they didn’t make the cut. We’ll see what today brings. :-)