I decided to switch back to using WordPress as my blogging platform this May. At the same time, I also took the decision of removing Google Analytics (GA) from my blog. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. So, I thought I’d remove GA for a few months and see if I miss its value.
I used GA primarily to identify which posts attracted the most readers and calculate the bounce rates. After a while, I felt like I didn’t really need this information, since, I wasn’t really doing anything with it. I just wrote about things that I thought were interesting. I was never motivated by my blog’s user engagement, to write about topics I wasn’t interested in.
As it turned out, I only needed some basic analytics on how my posts were performing. For instance, the number of views on a particular post is information that I find interesting. Using GA to track this information is unnecessary. GA is way more complicated. Using it to just track page views didn’t make sense.
Don’t get me wrong, I love data. I find graphs and statistics around data very interesting. I like extracting patterns out of data. But, I didn’t really want to do it with my blog. WordPress ships with a basic analytics dashboard that displays information such as number of views per post, number of comments, the day that recorded the highest number of views etc. These data points are enough for me with respect to my blog.
Hence, as of today, I’ve decided to get rid of GA on my blog for good.
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