[tweetle_beetle]

Out of curiosity, what decision do you anticipate taking for your personal site that would be informed by data from Google Analytics? In a commercial setting, it would be for things like adjusting marketing budgets (presumably not applicable), reviewing hosting infrastructure (you seem to have that taken care of), adjusting content strategy (not an issue if you're publishing on your own terms?) etc.

[ssss11]

Perhaps its a professional blog and they’d like to know about their audience.

[gbrindisi]

Simply put: I want to know if what I am writing is being read and how is propagated.

[chrismorgan]

Yeah, but what will you change based on what you discover? That’s the essence of what tweetle_beetle is asking and why many end up deciding that they don’t actually need analytics—because they’re not going to change anything based on what they observe.

[gbrindisi]

like it or not, analytics can give you actionable information to drive some seo improvements in how your content is displayed and consumed

[chrismorgan]

Can, sure, at least once you have enough volume of content; but will you use it? Almost no one actually does for personal blogs and the likes.