ben robison

Computers Only Do What You Tell Them To

I was just getting all my screenshots in order for a post on the Google Analytics conspiracy. I went into my GA account the other day and noticed that on November 15, all my tracking went to 0. No Page Views, no Visits, no Visitors, no Referring Traffic, no Nothing. Obviously I find this a little upsetting. I realize that my blog is not a major web crossroads, but I was averaging 30-ish Visits a day up to that point, so I found it a little disturbing.

I wondered why Google would possibly bother to penalize a site as small as mine. I had them though. I visit the site to post, and people were leaving comments on the blog. Can’t have comments without visits, so I knew they were deliberately messing with me. So I got all my dates in order, took GA screenshots, and then had a stroke of brilliance. I remembered that I had flipped AWStats on for this site back in January. AWStats is a log-file based analytics tool for those who don’t know, but it meant that I had another source for the same data that was missing GA.

I had photographic evidence of the conspiracy now. I had all my screenshots lined up and ready to go, when I suddenly had one final stroke of brilliance. Back on November the 14th I upgraded to the latest Wordpress, downloaded a new version of my theme compatible with the new version, and in the process, overwrote my GA collection code.

So I relearned the lesson that I’m always repeating to others when they’re mad at their computers. Computers only do what you tell them to.

Tags: conspiracy, google