Bunn is watching you (and is not alone)
Jun. 11th, 2011 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnJust so you know, I have Google Analytics installed on this journal. Google Analytics is a free website visitor analytics system which I use routinely on most of the websites that I work with. It logs information like :
Analytics does not record
Wow, look at all of you who have stopped by in the last month! Note that because I live in Britain, Google has kindly put me right in the middle. This makes me feel very important.
A lot of you seem to be using networks that say you are in Britain too. You are in the centre of the world, like me! But where, in our central little island, do you live?
Hmmm. there's something odd there. People who know where I live will notice that there is no blob over MY location. Do I not look at my own Livejournal account? Of course I do.
And in fact, the geographical guessing system is far from perfect. My ISP, Zen Internet, is obviously not dispensing particularly accurate data about the location of its customers. Looking at the location of those blobs, I think Analytics is guessing my location to be either Crawley or London. There are blobs over Plymouth and Truro, which would be closer, but when I break down the reports for those locations, I can see that they are not me, since I do not typically visit my journal by googling for custard buns or Birchenhayes orchards.
The geographic sensing has improved though. There were several years when I connected via Claranet when Google geosensing was adamant that I lived in Germany, to the point where I had to override defaults to get a version of Google that wasn't in German.
Which brings us to the searchers.
Custard bun seeking people, (what a lot of you there are too!) if you have read this far - I'm afraid that this is NOT a journal all about buns, though I can see how you might come to that conclusion from the username. However, I did once post a custard bun recipe here. I later made the recipe and it was quite good though I thought the buns were a bit sweet.
People who are looking for hairy lurchers I do have a hairy lurcher staying with me who at time of writing, will be available for adoption very soon. She is 14 years old and her name is Kya. All her details will soon be on the Oldies Club website. In the meanwhile, here are some photos. She will need a home where there are no resident or visiting children under the age of 10.
Eagle of the Ninth fans who want to know what Esca's name means, I wrote a short story about that. Then the idea grew on me and I wrote a much, much longer story. However, if you just want to know what the name might mean, this post (not by me) is probably more historically accurate.
People who want to know about Esca's dad Cunoval, I wrote a story about him too. But it is pure fiction. The name means something like 'famous hound' - you could try googling the Cornish spelling too, which is Kenwal.
People who don't like Exway Coachworks, I can only say I share your experience and I hope they eventually give your car back.
People who are growing Birchenhayes cherries or Morwellham pears - I've only had my trees a couple of years so I can't honestly tell you much. I will probably be posting about them again in the future though.
Website visitor analytics offer a brilliant way for the people who build and own websites to understand what the visitors are wanting, without having to intrude and demand time and effort to explain directly.
Knowing how people use a website, what they searched for, which pages they visited and in what order, helps the website owner either to help people find stuff they want more quickly and easily, or make it clearer that that isn't what they do.
This makes the web better and more useable for everyone.
Now OK, this is my personal journal : basically what it contains is stuff that caught my eye as being shiny or irritating or took my attention for any one of a thousand reasons. It doesn't actually have a customer service ethos. But for sites that do, analytics is a really important and honestly, not particularly intrusive tool that can help make the world a less irritating place.
- what searches were run that brought searchers to this journal
- which posts did people look at?
- what other sites linked people to this journal?
- what operating systems, browsers, screen resolutions, network locations did those people use?
Analytics does not record
- the name, email address, inside leg measurement or preferred salad dressing of the person using the computer to look at this.
- Anything that your machine/network isn't set up to disclose routinely.
Wow, look at all of you who have stopped by in the last month! Note that because I live in Britain, Google has kindly put me right in the middle. This makes me feel very important.
A lot of you seem to be using networks that say you are in Britain too. You are in the centre of the world, like me! But where, in our central little island, do you live?
Hmmm. there's something odd there. People who know where I live will notice that there is no blob over MY location. Do I not look at my own Livejournal account? Of course I do.
And in fact, the geographical guessing system is far from perfect. My ISP, Zen Internet, is obviously not dispensing particularly accurate data about the location of its customers. Looking at the location of those blobs, I think Analytics is guessing my location to be either Crawley or London. There are blobs over Plymouth and Truro, which would be closer, but when I break down the reports for those locations, I can see that they are not me, since I do not typically visit my journal by googling for custard buns or Birchenhayes orchards.
The geographic sensing has improved though. There were several years when I connected via Claranet when Google geosensing was adamant that I lived in Germany, to the point where I had to override defaults to get a version of Google that wasn't in German.
------------------------------------------
Which brings us to the searchers.
Custard bun seeking people, (what a lot of you there are too!) if you have read this far - I'm afraid that this is NOT a journal all about buns, though I can see how you might come to that conclusion from the username. However, I did once post a custard bun recipe here. I later made the recipe and it was quite good though I thought the buns were a bit sweet.
People who are looking for hairy lurchers I do have a hairy lurcher staying with me who at time of writing, will be available for adoption very soon. She is 14 years old and her name is Kya. All her details will soon be on the Oldies Club website. In the meanwhile, here are some photos. She will need a home where there are no resident or visiting children under the age of 10.
Eagle of the Ninth fans who want to know what Esca's name means, I wrote a short story about that. Then the idea grew on me and I wrote a much, much longer story. However, if you just want to know what the name might mean, this post (not by me) is probably more historically accurate.
People who want to know about Esca's dad Cunoval, I wrote a story about him too. But it is pure fiction. The name means something like 'famous hound' - you could try googling the Cornish spelling too, which is Kenwal.
People who don't like Exway Coachworks, I can only say I share your experience and I hope they eventually give your car back.
People who are growing Birchenhayes cherries or Morwellham pears - I've only had my trees a couple of years so I can't honestly tell you much. I will probably be posting about them again in the future though.
-------------------------------------------------
Why I love Google Analytics & website traffic analysis in general. Website visitor analytics offer a brilliant way for the people who build and own websites to understand what the visitors are wanting, without having to intrude and demand time and effort to explain directly.
Knowing how people use a website, what they searched for, which pages they visited and in what order, helps the website owner either to help people find stuff they want more quickly and easily, or make it clearer that that isn't what they do.
This makes the web better and more useable for everyone.
Now OK, this is my personal journal : basically what it contains is stuff that caught my eye as being shiny or irritating or took my attention for any one of a thousand reasons. It doesn't actually have a customer service ethos. But for sites that do, analytics is a really important and honestly, not particularly intrusive tool that can help make the world a less irritating place.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 04:26 pm (UTC)However, now all I want to do is visit your site 40 times in a row, so I can have the biggest blob in the UK. And before you say anything about competitiveness and gold stars, it's only because I want to find out where it thinks I live. Which is not where I do live, clearly, due to the absence of any Vectian Blob.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 05:31 pm (UTC)I don't normally check the stats on this particular account and can't remember why I set it up now, but today I felt inspired to look and see how (in)accurate the location testing was.
I checked your IP/service provider/referrer report, and it thinks you are in Crawley. What IS it about Crawley???
Analytics aggregates requests into visits (more guesstimating), so if you did want to be the biggest blob :-D you'd have to wait between visits. I can't remember off the top of my head how long it takes before it assumes a new request from the same IP is a new session, but I have a feeling it's about half an hour.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 05:39 pm (UTC)Although there was one search for 'ladyofastolat' which baffled me somewhat (I hope they found you!) and also a deeply mysterious one : "images of mothers worried about hot weather" to which... ???
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 10:06 pm (UTC)http://www.google.com/analytics/ for more info.
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=307 explains how to use it on an LJ paid account.
Probably a basic hosting package will be using simple logfile analysis so even if it was stable, Google Analytics would be more accurate (though no website traffic analysis system is 100% accurate).
no subject
Date: 2011-06-12 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 12:44 pm (UTC)Your browser: HI! Can I have a copy of http://bunn.livejournal.com/275825.html sent to me at my IP address (86.163.226.88) please? I'd like to read it.
Webserver: Hi there! I have a copy of that page right here, can you give me your full details?
Your browser: Thanks! I'm Google Chrome, running on Windows Vista. I've just arrived here from http://thecatsamuel.livejournal.com/friends and I am working for a logged in Livejournal user.
Webserver: Great! As you have a logged in user, I'll supply this page with the default settings for thecatsamuel, and as you are using Chrome, I'll supply the template that is tweaked for that web browser. HERE it is, sent to 86.163.226.88 - your public IP address.
------------------------
Now, some of that is essential information. If the web server didn't know your IP address, then you wouldn't be able to see the page, in the same way that you are not going to get letters from people who you don't trust to know your postal address: Webserver wouldn't know where to send it to.
Though you could use a sort of PO box address to hide your full address (called a proxy server).
You could also set your browser up to hide some of the other information - eg, you could tell it to lie and say you are using a different browser and operating system, or that you aren't really thecatsamuel.
But, if you hid that stuff, then Webserver would not be able to give you a nice tailored version of the page. Instead, you might be blocked from seeing friends-only content, and you might get a version of the page that didn't work very well on whatever device you were really using to read it.
If you were really sneaky and hid everything, then Webserver might well conclude that your request wasn't from a real person who wanted to read the page, but part of an attack, and might refuse to talk to you.
So, it's usually a good thing when web browsers are prepared to exchange information with web servers: it means the web browsers get the right, up to date, and correctly structured page, and the people that run the webservers and web pages can make sure the infrastructure is there to serve the requests appropriately.
Admittedly, I don't particularly need this information for my own personal blog, but in my day job, I use it a lot to improve the online experience for people in various ways.
Information about these request/response exchanges is usually logged in a number of places and used for a number of things. For example, with that request, your ISP is logging it, your web browser is logging it (in browser history), the Livejournal server is logging it, and I've asked Google to log it (in my Analytics account, which is only viewable by me. Well, me and Google staff. )
I can only log or view the information that relates to my own pages, not anything else. So I can see some people searched for custard buns and came to my pages, because the request from the browser says which page was the previous one. But I can't tell if they then closed their browser in disgust at my poor custard bun recipe, or went back and searched for rhubarb buns instead, because at that point they leave my little section of the internet and I can't 'see' them any more.
Google can (if they went back to Google), and the owners of other websites that they looked at can.
From the privacy point of view, the organisation which is logging the most data, and is able to crossreference it accurately with your postal address, phone number, etc, is your ISP.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 04:55 pm (UTC)