Analytics Experiment: Switching from Tinylytics to Goatcounter

I haven’t had analytics on this site/blog in many years, but as I’m trying to use it more to engage with the rest of the Internet, I’m finding myself wondering:

What has been helpful for people? How are they getting here?

To that end, I’m experimenting with some simple analytics for the site. Just enough to answer those two questions, over time.

Tinylytics

I first found and have been trying Tinylytics. It’s a simple freemium service that lets you track basic things for free. I was using it for a couple weeks and, in the free tier, it didn’t provide me with an answer to the second question.

Goatcounter

Then I found Goatcounter last week and set it up in parallel to compare. It is not as pretty, but answers my two questions.

So, I’ll be turning off Tinylytics and letting Goatcounter run for a few more weeks and see what I learn. I’m kind of inclined to not run analytics collection all the time and instead turn it on for maybe a month or two a year. Maybe that would be enough to get a general feel for the rhythm of visitors, without training myself to watch analytics all the time.

In either case I’m not keeping any of this to myself: anyone who visits this site can view these analytics at /analytics - just like the guestbook.