You write, "...Using Google tools is a recipe for headaches". Agree.
For power nerds seeking historical context, the following irony may entertain....
Back in the opening days of the public Internet (1995-2000) search engine wars were the Big Thing, with many companies competing to dominate that all important service. In the race to dominate, all the players added more and more and more crap to their home pages. Many columns, many boxes, zillion of links, and buttons and forms etc. Extremely confusing!
Google's genius was to run in the other direction, and they offered a super simple search page, and by doing so, they won the search engine wars. And then...
Having won the race through a super savvy simplicity strategy, they then proceeded to create some of the most convoluted, complex, and confounding interfaces on the planet. There's a clear message here:
If what you're doing brings you great success, stop doing that, and do something else, ideally in the opposite direction.
There is a far easier method of accomplishing much the same thing, but it requires intervention from the Substack team.
Statcounter.com is way better than Substack's built in stats, and far easier that anything made by Google. And it's free. (There's a paid option, but you likely don't really need it.) I used Statcounter on countless sites for years before coming to Substack. They've been around a long time, many years before Substack.
To install Statcounter you just copy and paste a few lines of code in to your site template, and you're done, super easy, newbie friendly.
What's not super easy is persuading the Substack team to make this option available on their platform. I've been making the case over and over for the last year, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Should anyone reading this wish to take up this holy cause, go for it. I'm not getting anywhere, but maybe you can.
You write, "...Using Google tools is a recipe for headaches". Agree.
For power nerds seeking historical context, the following irony may entertain....
Back in the opening days of the public Internet (1995-2000) search engine wars were the Big Thing, with many companies competing to dominate that all important service. In the race to dominate, all the players added more and more and more crap to their home pages. Many columns, many boxes, zillion of links, and buttons and forms etc. Extremely confusing!
Google's genius was to run in the other direction, and they offered a super simple search page, and by doing so, they won the search engine wars. And then...
Having won the race through a super savvy simplicity strategy, they then proceeded to create some of the most convoluted, complex, and confounding interfaces on the planet. There's a clear message here:
If what you're doing brings you great success, stop doing that, and do something else, ideally in the opposite direction.
Huh? What?
There is a far easier method of accomplishing much the same thing, but it requires intervention from the Substack team.
Statcounter.com is way better than Substack's built in stats, and far easier that anything made by Google. And it's free. (There's a paid option, but you likely don't really need it.) I used Statcounter on countless sites for years before coming to Substack. They've been around a long time, many years before Substack.
https://statcounter.com/
To install Statcounter you just copy and paste a few lines of code in to your site template, and you're done, super easy, newbie friendly.
What's not super easy is persuading the Substack team to make this option available on their platform. I've been making the case over and over for the last year, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Should anyone reading this wish to take up this holy cause, go for it. I'm not getting anywhere, but maybe you can.
Thanks Karen, I've saved it for when I get to that point!
can you explain more about what you see on google analytics in a future post? This is very helpful for setting up. I'd like to know what to monitor.
Thanks for the breakdown! Is it possible to add any other analytics (non-Google) to Substack, eg via a code snippet in the Head section of the site?