Posted December 30, 2016
0 Comments	Includes Analytics

This is my final post of 2016, and I thought I’d share a recent update to this site to close out this year. I currently use Google Analytics to check how many people visit this site, but I recently added Hotjar as a backup analytics tool.

Why did I do this?

I did this because Google Analytics was massively spammed last month by a Russian fan of Donald Trump, who won the 2016 Presidential Election. The name of the fan in question is Vitaly Popov, who has been using ghost spam for years.

Popov used what’s called referral spam. Referral spam sends fake visits to Google Analytics, which can throw off site visitor data by a large margin. This has affected my ability to get accurate information as to who is visiting my site and why.

How does this affect you?

Adding Hotjar as a second option for analytics gives me a better idea of what you do on this site. Having that information is valuable in order to make this site better for you. Hotjar’s Heatmaps feature gives me information on what pages you visit, so I can focus more on the pages that you visit, as well as improve the ones that need attention. This is just one of the ways I can improve this site. If you have any other ideas on how I can improve this site, use the Contact page in the navigation bar.

I wish you all a Happy New Year, and may your 2017 be better than your 2016!