Thanks for those explanations. I used to look at my Google search stats a lot but eventually I realised I had no real idea what they meant so I rarely bother any more. That made some of it a little clearer but I still think most of the numbers Google spews out are garbage. These days, the only numbers I really look at are how many followers I have on Feedly and how many comments I get.

Blaugust is weird for me, though, It’s the one time of the year I do look at my stats, mostly because it’s when I see a lot of posts about the topic, and almost everyone reports increased traffic. My traffic generally stays almost exactly as it was. Some years it’s actually dropped during Blaugust. I think I might have gotten more comments but with only a couple of exceptions – yourself being one – they were all from the people who generally comment on my posts. I rarely get comments during Blaugust from new Blaugustians, which gives me the impression most of them aren’t visiting the blog, which would certainly tie in with the lack of incresed traffic.

I was pleased to see you mention your word count, too. The devil in me wants to suggest to Belghast that we add a new Blaugchievement next year based on exactly that. I won’t though because I think the achiever aspects of the event have already taken more prominence than is healthy. Still, I do like to see a big word count…