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Here’s My Annual Blogging Stats Checkup

A laptop with a 3D pie chart and printed graphsDeposit Photos

I like to wrap up the first week of a new year by checking blogging stats against the previous year. It gives me an idea of how I’m doing.

I try to perform a blogging stats checkup a few times a year. Google Analytics is the primary source I rely on to measure stats like visitors, page views and top articles. But I’m also trying a WordPress plugin called Burst Statistics to give me a “second opinion.”

Google Analytics made major changes in its “Google Analytics 4” to better accommodate various global privacy laws. But in doing so, it had to stop keeping some long-term stats compared to its predecessor, Universal Analytics. GA4 also changed how it classifies certain counts, which means apples-to-apples comparisons of previous blogging statistics aren’t really possible.

Last year, I was able to get most of my numbers, though there was a “dark” period where I lost data because the GA4 hadn’t started counting when the prior version stopped.

So for 2024 numbers, I should at least have a full year’s worth of data to work with. I should also be able to compare a year’s worth or statistics to the previous year. (At least, I’m hoping it’ll work out that way!)

The stats I pay the most attention to…and why

When I’ve provided a yearly blogging stats checkup in past years, there are a few key stats I’ve monitored.

The first is unique visitors. As the name suggests, it’s a count of how many people visited the blog over the course of the year. If one reader visited only once and another reader visited once a week all year, a unique visitors count for the entire calendar year would count them both only once.

The second is page views. That tells me whether people are reading more of my content.

The third is page views per visit. This stat is related to the first two in that I like to see how many pages the average visitor may click on while they’re here. Hopefully the number of pages per visit increases. That’s a sign that people are here for more than just a quick read of one article. (I’d like to think at least some of my readers feel entertained or informed just enough to want to explore a bit while they’re here.)

The fourth thing I look at is time-on-site. Just like the pages-per-visit stat, I like to see time-on-site increase a bit. That could also suggest readers are spending more time here. But it is a tricky stat. More and more people scan these days. I’ve watched stats on news sites at my real job. A story that would likely have a two or three-minute reading time might have an average of about 20 seconds spent on it. Time-on-site stats can definitely be discouraging if you don’t keep that in mind.

The fifth thing I pay attention to is bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visits in which someone enters the blog on a specific page and then leaves the blog from that same page. A high bounce rate means visitors aren’t exploring deeper. A lower bounce rate means they’re visiting multiple pages before leaving. This is one of those stats where lower is better.

The trick with this stat is that for blogs, particularly ones that perform fairly well with search traffic, people may come looking for the answer to a specific question. If a Google search takes them to that article and they get the answer they need and leave, you’ve served them even though the overall bounce rate will increase because of it.

So I focus only on the home page bounce rate. It gives you a better picture of how well your home page is pulling people in.

Why I’d tell you how this blog fared last year

So why on earth would I reveal the actual results of a blogging stats checkup? Well, I don’t provide actual numbers in terms of things like page views or users. There are plenty of blogs that have far higher totals than I do, which would depress me.

This blog might have higher totals than other people’s blogs, and that would depress them.

What I give instead is a percentage increase or decrease year-to-year. The raw numbers aren’t really all that important to anyone other than me.

But looking at how I’ve grown (or not grown) from one year to the next is something that might inspire me to make better goals.

Maybe if I have stats that fall, it might encourage someone else who is seeing similar drops to know they’re not alone. And if I have gains, maybe that will inspire a fellow blogger to set a similar growth goal for 2025.

So here’s how ‘Patrick’s Place’ performed in 2024

So looking at the numbers — which I didn’t actually do until I started writing this part of the post, I find the news is mixed. Part of the challenge with the “new” Analytics is that some things are defined in different ways. That means this new version of Google Analytics doesn’t make a blogging stats checkup as easy as it used to be. We now have to “translate” new data and compare it to what we think best compares to our older terminology.

I had a drop in users and page views in 2024. Both were around 10%. That’s not a huge concern because part of that can be attributed to a drop in referrals from social media.

More people are trying more social media platforms, so there’s volatility there. Then, platforms like X seem to be deprioritizing link posts because they want everyone to publish their content directly on their platform. I understand that, but at the same time, for bloggers, that’s a bad idea. We need traffic here, not on social media.

Still, almost any drop is a worry, so I’ll have to take a bigger look at that.

GA4 doesn’t seem to offer a “page views-per-visit” measure. Instead, it offers a comparison of “events,” which includes page views, duration on page, ad impressions and any clicks on pages. Events, in GA4-speak, are good things. You want a higher event count, naturally, because that means GA4’s indications are that people are getting more from your site. My event count is up 10% and my “key event” count — something that GA4 seems to be interpreting on its own — is up 80%. Unfortunately, I can’t really see what it thinks “key events” happen to be, so that’ll be another project for 2025.

For “time-on-site,” GA4 offers a measure of “engaged time per active users.” That is up slightly year-to-year. But up slightly is better than down, so I’ll take that as good news.

GA4’s bounce rate measure is confusing only because it appears they’re mislabeling a drop in bounce rate as a negative. The problem with that is a drop in bounce rate — meaning a drop in the number of visits in which your readers don’t interact and leave from that same page — is a good thing. You want a lower bounce rate. In fact, SemRush calls a bounce rate of 40% or below a “good bounce rate.”

My homepage bounce rate is higher than I’d like it to be. But it dropped by 7%. That’s a definite improvement. Overall, the bounce rate for my site dropped 4%, which is also a good sign. But GA4 shows that result in red rather than green like it’s bad news. If GA4’s reports don’t understand what they’re providing, that’s a bad reflection on GA4!


That’s my blogging stats checkup for the new year. There is some improvement but I’m not overjoyed with the numbers.

At the same time, I’m still trying to decide how much I even trust GA4 now that I truly have a full year of comparison to work with. Next year, when I’ll have that “second opinion” to work with, that might give me a better idea. When I have a couple of months’ worth of data from Burst, I may do a few month-to-month comparisons between GA4 and Burst just to see if the two are showing me the same increases or decreases. If there’s a discrepancy, that might make me feel a little better about GA4.

I understand that Google had to make changes based on privacy laws. At the same time, I don’t like that it made data many of us depended on harder to find.

It makes a self-checkup that much more of a challenge, which isn’t exactly what we bloggers need.

How often do you perform a deeper dive into your blogging stats? Are you seeing good news?

In any case, thanks for reading and I hope you’ll make a habit out of it in the new year!

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.
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