I have been using Google Analytics on my website for nearly its entire existence. Back when it was hosted on Squarespace. Back when it was a Wordpress server. Back when it was served over iWeb.

And I used to really care about the data. I would frequently check to see how many visits my site got. At one point, I even served ads. The data mattered to me. I cared about it.

But that was a long time ago. I haven’t actually checked my analytics in… gosh I don’t know how long. I can’t remember it. And I haven’t done anything with the data for a long time.

Then I saw this:

And it made me wonder: should I be collecting data on visitors to my blog? Does it help me? Who does it help? Who might it hurt?

I didn’t have satisfying answers to these questions, so I have removed Google Analytics tracking from ashfurrow.com.