Hello Finland!

I have two words for my blogging friends: Google Analytics. I told you that as I get into blogging, I'll share some of the cool things I find out, and this one is a favorite. Google analytics (no matter how many times I type the word 'analytics' it never gets easier) is completely free, you sign in with your google/gmail/eblogger ID, and it will give you a code you can copy and paste at the bottom of your blog (by the way, if you don't see anything on your blog, you didn't do it wrong, you're not supposed to see anything).


Here's what it does:

When you log in after a couple days of letting people look at your blog, it give you a report of all the traffic your blog is seeing. You can see the amount of hits your site receives each day, the amount of time they spent looking at your site, bounce rate (not sure exactly what that means), whether they found your site through someone else's or if they typed your site directly, percent of new visits, etc. The one I like to check is the map- it tells me where the hits are coming from. My site has had hits from 14 different countries (including Finland :), and 27 different states in the U.S. You can get as specific as what city is looking at your site. It's enough to make you a bit nervous... but I'll stay public for a while. Most of the hits from cities where I know I have no friends or relavites only stay for a few seconds (long enough for them to realize I'm not what they were looking for :).

Anyway, I just thought this was something worth sharing... I hope I don't scare off any friends or family!!