I check the numbers of my blog on my lunch break. Instead of getting a nice ice-cream desert, I look at my posts and how (un)successful my writing has been. For the longest time, I didn’t truly understand SEO and all that other fancy data. Surely, people checking my blog were actual people, right?
Then I did some reading and even got into the fancy Google Analytics. I mean, my blog visits are in fairly small numbers so data analyzing on grand scale really is not too realistic. But with Google Analytics, I learned the hard truth. “All” those “visitors” from my blog were actually just spam websites. Referral websites which “advertise the website they want people to visit and it will improve the spammers search engine ranking by creating backlinks to their website off your website’s access log.” They are mooching off my website log while making me believe they actually read my thoughts, feelings, or satire? How messed up is that?!
Granted, WordPress does provide some sort of filtering, but I know my data is skewed. And my Goodness, Google Analytics is a hot mess! It leaves me wondering if I have any actual visitors, genuine visitors at all? The only true feedback I trust these days is when you, dear reader, like my post. That’s it. Because for the longest time I believed that these spam numbers were actual readers, that I was sharing my content with the world. So before you go and check your blog data in Google Analytics… just don’t. Take the blue pill. Believe whatever you want to believe because this statistic trickery and back-linking is depressing.
leahrennes 
