Playing with Google Analytics

22 février 2007

Let's make things clear : I'm not really comfortable with Google being the major (80% !) search engine, I'd really prefer to deal with more "open source" and completely ad-free stuff. Well, there are directories, but they are usually boring, ugly, and not efficient. I'm waiting for the the wikia project to come out, but I haven't find a better tool than Google for some applications.
Their email application, their search engine, their text applications are simple, light, and efficient. And free. I wonder how they make money. What, Google ads ? Seriously, do you know anybody who ever clicked on a Google ad ? I never did!
Anyway, it's been three month that I included some scripts in my pages, to see if I'm popular. Google Analytics gives a set of tools to see if your website could basically make some money (they use the aphorism "objective" two times a line in their presentation). What I'm interested in is what pages are popular, and how many people come to my website.

(...)
Well, actually, I've seen that only two pages are really popular (sounds and home, the second one because it leads to sounds), and I didn't change anything. So I guess that my only interest is actually to know how many people come here.
And, most of all, the map.
They have this little map, which shows from where people looked at my website, and it's a really cool thing. Imagine, I'm here, in Lyon, France, with my little sounds I didn't know what to do with them one year ago, and it happens to be now that my sound of toilet flush might be played at this very moment in Cairo !
Isn't it crazy ?

(...)
Is it ?...

Well, I imagine that lots of people might think that 100 person a day on a website is not a lot of people. But I do. To me, it's like if a hundred persons came to my door each day ! I feel important. And a little scared too, yes...

Ok, you have to substract the people who typed "big boobies" in Google search. It's not written anywhere in my website ? Now it is ! That page itself will have a +20% in the week to come, I know it !
Then, you have to substract all the people who where looking for information for actual objects. Like the guy who wants to find a cheap electric screwdriver, and finds sound of one on my website. I don't think it's what he was looking for. Although I paid the one that I recorded only 15 €, and it's a good one...
Then, substract the people who didn't find what they were looking for. They should send me a message and ask me for it, but... Well, I had this guy who asked me for a motorbike sound, a very specific one, a Mitsubishi with letters and numbers in its name... I guess that most of these people know that, if I don't have sounds like this one, I wont have "their" sounds...
So, let's say that 40% of those people coming here are just "lost on the web". That's still 60 people who did find something intersesting here. For this type of "market" (sounds, only sounds, more sounds, not even famous sounds but sounds of objects, things...), that's enough for me. And when you think that I'm not even in the first pages of Google, that's quite a crowd.

(...)
What was I talking about ?
Yes, the map.
I don't know if it's really useful. I highly doubt. But it's really someting.
Ok, mine looks like this :

The website being mostly in French, the dots on France covers almost the whole Europe. I know that there are also some people from Belgium, Switzerland, and some parts of the Nederlands and Germany who check this site often.
Of course, Quebec helps a lot too. Merci, Belle Province. We sent you this year one of my friends, an environmentalist : take care of her, she's really valuable...
I also have people from Reunion, Nouvelle Calédonie, French Guyana, French Polynesia, all these places that you'd be surprised to know that they are actually French (ok, Nouvelle Calédonie is a special case, 2012 will be a big year for them).
But I should mention also Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and some "black Africa" countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, who, despite the independance, still speak a better French than I do.

To all the people from these places, in plus a thank you, I owe them (just like all French should) a salutation. Because I realized that somehow, I had a link to all of them.
Morocco : my best friend from primary school was called Abdelaziz, and I went every afternoon in his home to eat what I called "Morocoan crepes"
Algeria : I have a brother in law from there, and he gave my family the most beautiful nieces in the world.
Reunion : a mother's friend teaches there. It's sad to think of the lack of investment of the French government their. They must consider it as "only good for vacations"...
Ivory Coast : I lived above the appartment of a representative of Allassane Ouattara in Lyon. A taxi driver, in 2004. I hope he's doing better now.
Senegal : my first three discs where discs of Neil Young, Aha (ok, stop it now) and... Toure Kunda. This last one was also my first concert (I was 10).
French Polynesia : ok, it's only because of Brel and Gauguin. And also because my brother went their. For his military service, in the french Marine. On the Dumont Durville (New Caledonians, rings a bell ?). Well, after that, he became a pacifist, worked for Greenpeace and was at Mururoa during the final nuclear test in 1995, arrested by the french military, and taken into custody on the... Dumont Durville. Sometimes life can be such an irony...
French Guyana : ok, I was a kid, I had all the stickers of the Ariane rocket, and I was stucked on TV each time they launched it... Now, I think that it's one of these french territories we still consider as colonies. Well... The cop who arrested me for not having a car insurance was from french Guyana, so, I'm sorry, but you deserve it... (Kidding... Ok, not funny, sorry).
Papeetee : seriously, don't you have more funny stuff to do than going on the Internet ???

When you think about it, that's a lot of places you feel you have a link with. And I not even mentionned RFO...

Now, those who came by the english version of my website...
(...)
Ok, when I say "english", I should mention that it's not my mother language, and that my (american) wife is quite lazy at correcting it...

But, we have people from Beijing (censors let me pass), Japan (deeply sorry about that), Dubai (double the paycheck of your Pakistanese and Indian construction workers so that they can go back to their families before asking me for anything), Saudi Arabia (may I step in the Mecca with my mics, pleeeeease ?), Israel and Palestine (feeling like UNO), Brasil (disapointed by Lula ? Be careful, the right is not the solution, we're experiencing it here since 1995...), India (do you like my tablas ?)...

And of course, the United States of America (I should say : the United States of Those Between the Mexican Boarder and The Niagara Falls, Who Speak English, Are Mostly White, And Have a Funny Electoral System).
As my daughter is Franco-American, I feel a deep, sentimental link with this country...
Ok, it's also a country with dozens of millions people with credit cards, hey, why do you think I put a Paypal "Donate" button on my website ?!

So, we have people from New York (hi John, thanks for coming...), California (Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego... What, nobody from San Francisco ? Hey, I went there, I've got friends there, what are they doing ?), Texas (Houston, hey, Anne, you live in Austin, no?), New Orleans (... they still have Internet there ?), Kansas (must be my in laws...), Chicago (I went there too, people were scary... Stopping and asking you if you need any help, waiters nice and smiling, definitively not what we're used to in France...), Milwhakee (whatever way it's spelled... Sorry, my wife, I know you were born there and... yes, it's a nice town. The architect who made this museum in the shape of a boat there made an airport in the shape of a bird, in Lyon, France... Must have some strange issues...), Detroit (as most Europeans, I should say: "nice airport, really, and the dutty free shops, wow..."), Georges Town (near DC ? I lost my way there, I went through Washington by foot during the night, found no public toilets and, well... I've been a little "french" on the Pentagon, sorry...), and a whole bunch of towns I never heard of in New Jersey (although I read Philip Roth books), New Mexico (they have towns, there?), and other places some people told me about "you don't know these places ? You don't wanna know..."

To all these people, even those who were initialy looking for electric screwdrivers and big boobies, I want to say, for my website's anniversary : thank you for coming !