Reading · Blog by Steve Frenzel

Why I’m using GoatCounter

After I launched my blog in 2023 and gradually started seeing more engagement with my posts on Mastodon, I became curious about which ones were the “most popular.” It’s hard to determine this based on tracking alone, since it only records who visits a particular page; It doesn’t provide information if they actually read it or found it helpful.

Still, it gives me an idea of what might interest people the most. But since I’m not a fan of tracking myself and wanted to make sure it was GDPR-compliant, I decided to go with GoatCounter! It gives me more than enough information to form an opinion.

Since I have nothing to hide, I’d like to share with you the metrics recorded since October 2024. Let’s go!

Most visited pages (top ten)

How to: Cancel a Figma subscription: 2778 visits
TIDAL “Wrapped” 2023: 1004 visits
Homepage: 907 visits
How to (not) use aria-label, -labelledby and -describedby: 807 visits
Menu and navigation: The difference: 677 visits
Create a custom theme in iA Presenter (reworked): 481 visits
Should links open in a new tab?: 328 visits
Should text be truncated?: 265 visits
Preparing for the WAS exam: 255 visits
Screen reader check: SoundCloud widget: 249 visits

I’m really happy to see that a bunch of articles meant to help people made it into the top ten. But I didn’t expect my Figma article to be so far ahead in the rankings. 😅 That just shows me how opaque Figma’s cancellation process is.

It’s also really interesting that the TIDAL “Wrapped” article is in second place, because that’s something I’ve been researching myself. With TIDAL, though, “Wrapped” is available for the whole year, unlike with Spotify. Or has that changed? No idea, I haven’t used Spotify in years.

For those who are interested: I haven’t taken the WAS exam yet, and I’m not currently preparing for it. 😂 Due to the high cost and my mixed feelings about the IAAP, I don’t want to pay for this training myself. However, if the opportunity for sponsorship arises, I’ll take advantage of it.

Top referrers (top six)

Google: 56%
Unknown: 28%
DuckDuckGo: 1%
Yandex: 1%
ChatGPT: 1%
Bing: 1%

It’s no big surprise that Google is in first place. I’d be more interested in what “unknown” refers to and how OpenAI used my intellectual property to train their models.

Browsers

Chrome: 69%
Safari: 23%
Firefox: 8%
Unknown: 1%
Internet Explorer: 1%
Edge: 0%

That doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me either, but I didn’t expect Internet Explorer (rest in pieces) to be on this list! It’s also interesting that Edge is listed with 0%. That’s because there were very few visits, and the percentages are apparently rounded up to whole numbers?

Systems

macOS: 41%
Windows: 31%
iOS: 14%
Linux: 4%
Chrome OS: 2%

Locations (top six)

United States: 27%
Germany: 10%
United Kingdom: 9%
Canada: 4%
Brazil: 3%
Australia: 2%

It’s really interesting that most of the traffic comes from the U.S. and the Americas in general. And 2% from Australia? Maybe someone from Intopia found their way to my website? 😁

Languages (top six)

English: 67%
German: 7%
Russian: 3%
Spanish: 2%
Portuguese: 2%
Unknown: 2%

Again, very curious about this “unknown” language!

Sizes

Computer monitors: 56%
Phones: 22%
Computer monitors larger than HD: 17%
Tablets and large phones: 5%
Unknown: 0%

I find this metric particularly interesting, since I don’t know how accurate these numbers are, because the ideal viewport doesn’t exist.

Final thoughts

Dear readers, I hope you don’t mind that I collect no personally identifiable information so I can get a sense of what interests you. I’ve learned that, fortunately, the most helpful articles are the ones meant to provide assistance, not the ones where I write about random things.

Thank you for your interest, and I’ll see you in the next article! 🤗

A year and a half using GoatCounter

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