Over the last several weeks, I have learned to parse user agents, differentiate bot traffic from human traffic, and catch why JetPack, StatCounter, and cPanel don’t always match. Yes, I can actually determine who is a human being landing here versus when Amazon is sending a webcrawler or ClaudeAI is collecting information to expand its programming when responding to human querents — by the way, you can pry my beloved em dash from my cold dead hands because I refuse to stop using it simply because people insist its usage implies an AI bot wrote something! (Notice I stop just short of using my native tongue to tell you exactly how I really feel.) What are some key points I have discovered as I rekindled my passion for writing in the digital realm?
- JetPack cannot tell me if the page hit was actually a person or a bot: I found discrepancies between AWStats and JetPack analytics so far, and I’m actually really confused about the differences between timestamps and other information.
- JetPack is fabulous for built-in visitor analysis: assuming the visitor isn’t pinging from a VPN and is actual human, it’s fun to see the various locations my readers are. So far, I haven’t seen many exotic locations, but maybe one day I’ll check list to see if I can collect all 50 United States plus each of the continents. It could be a fun challenge!
- I really should have gone back to StatCounter soon: I used to track analytics on StatCounter back when I was otaku-deep in anime culture, but life happened. You know when those pesky things called bills and responsibilities become so overwhelming that your chest tightens just thinking about the number of days left until payday and the various ways you can prepare chicken so that your children won’t rebel too wildly? Yeah, that kind of happening. Now life is sort of in a place where I can actually dissociate while pumping gas, so I remembered that StatCounter used to be my very best friend!
- Adding HTML code to a visual website builder is obnoxious! In additional to just drifting away from the practice of writing and being creative, I also couldn’t muster the patience properly install the StatCounter code on my main website. As of yesterday, I figured out how to embed the code into the visual design finally and actually got the damn thing to function! SUCCESS! So, bot, spider, webcrawler, corporate spy, government official, or innocent human being? I see all of you!
- cPanel Visitor data should allow more options instead of pushing website owners to things like JetPack and StatCounter in the first place! I had visitors jump from one site to the next in a sequence that indicated a probable human was clicking links methodically, and I would have appreciated linking that data to see what content kept them engaged longer! What interests a human to keep them on my site? I don’t care about the AI traffic that’s scraping for training data — I care about engaging with my readers and getting them to return (and possibly interact and build that online community). I’m not trying to be nosy — I’m trying to be successful, damn it! I captured lightning in a bottle with one blog post going viral in November 2009, but I mean… I can’t have a homebirth after 2 c-sections all the damn times, you guys! That little boy was it, done, finito! (But also, I’m getting back into that B.S. mindset of “we must monetize everything,” and we do NOT need to monetize everything.)
In our Unraveling course, we’re focused on our feet: where are our feet, what’s on the ground around our feet, etc. I take this to mean we are grounding ourselves. I am looking down at my feet, my web traffic, the footprints landing on my pages. I am grounding myself in metrics. Which metrics are important? Why do I care so much about the metrics, the analysis? What am I looking for? Why does this matter to me? I’ve been looking back at the footprints that brought me here — the ancestors who traveled outside of their comfort zones. What is my goal? What is the purpose of this? I do not need the answers just yet, but I do need to be aware of the questions.
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