GA Real Time Report Switched Off

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   eugbugposted 15 months ago

   Well that's it. No more watching Real Time reports in Universal Analytics. Now we have to use crappy GA4.

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      Miebakagh57posted 15 months agoin reply to this

      I've never use GA on my blogs, or on hubpages.                                          But due to its universality(?) I download the tool on my smart phone a week ago.                                  Surprisedly, when I turn on the device it says it can't see something to work with tough I had Gmail and HubPages active on my smart device. And I don't get it either.                                        Holy monkey

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   PaulGoodman67posted 15 months ago

   Real Time was always fun although I've never been sure how useful it actually is in terms of analysis.
   
   I've yet to get around to setting up GA4. It's on the to-do list.

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      eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

      I can't make any sense of the historical data reports. With UA you could look at the trend for all traffic to HP sites, then just pick an article from the list. That doesn't seem possible with GA4. They show 5 traces, no total view stats per day and no obvious way to select individual article stats. Also the Real Time report isn't exactly "real time". Maybe it updates every 5 minutes. UA real time was good entertainment at least, if not useful. I found it almost hypnotic.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 15 months agoin reply to this

         Like with many things HP-related, such as the earnings reports, the live reporting felt good when things were going well. Nowadays, not so much.

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   eugbugposted 15 months ago

   Actually the Real Time report isn't animated. You have to refresh the browser to get an update. (or maybe it updates every 10 or 15 minutes)

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   eugbugposted 15 months ago

   Actually it is dynamic, but the refresh rate seems to be every few minutes.

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   Glenn Stokposted 15 months ago

   With the old GA, I used to watch readers come and go. I found it helpful to see how long each individual reader spent on each article.
   
   GA4 still shows where they are from, what article has been read, and how many are mobile or desktop. But I miss having the moving timeline showing how many people are reading at any particular moment.
   
   Now GA4 just shows how many people had read my articles in the past 30 minutes. So, it is no longer real-time data.

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      eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

      The Real Time report doesn't seem to be customisable. So it's not possible to remove unwanted panes or even widen the pane that shows the landing pages. I have some articles with the same few keywords at the beginning of the title, so I can't differentiate between them because the titles are truncated.

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   eugbugposted 15 months ago

   GA4 also uses quite a bit of power on my laptop. 20 W when I change to that tab and only 1 W when I switch back to the Hubpages tab, according to Core Temp

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      Glenn Stokposted 15 months agoin reply to this

      I don't have that problem with GA4, but I do have a similar problem when I try to read people's articles on HubPages niche sites with my iPad. After a minute or two, it crashes and reloads the page due to overuse of resources, possibly related to all the ads.
      
      It reloads at the top, so I lose my place where I was reading. It's very frustrating, and I can only imagine how many readers we lose because of that. Most people use mobile devices, so it must have a huge effect on our SEO.

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         eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

         The processor cores have reached over 90 degrees on my laptop when I'm reading articles on the niche sites, and Core Temp asks do I want to shutdown. The fans also run flat out. I think Windows itself will actually do an emergency shutdown when the max core/cores temperature is reached. Apparently Firefox which I use can be resource hungry, but I much prefer its simple layout and the way it shows bookmarks compared to other browsers. It's definitely the ads that are causing the high use of resources because with an ad blocker turned on, everything calms down and even the fans shut off.

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            Glenn Stokposted 15 months agoin reply to this

            Yes, that confirms the problem. I also notice my iPad's battery gets warm when I read hubs. I prefer reading on my iPad rather than on my desktop. I’m surprised TAG doesn’t care about that since most people use mobile devices. I’m sure they know it’s a problem by now.

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               eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

               Interestingly when I run my laptop on battery power, the cores stay cool and the fans stay off. However the power plan is set for optimum battery life in that case, so presumably the processors take their time doing things and pages refresh slower.

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                  Glenn Stokposted 15 months agoin reply to this

                  Interesting! I could try an iPad setting that uses less battery power. It asks if I want to switch to that when it’s under 20% remaining.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 15 months ago

   Goodman's Law #437: Any discussion in the HP forums that continues for long enough will eventually focus on the adverts.

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      eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

      Goodman's Law #437, sub clause 5: Matt will step in and tell us not to be worrying about ads and to be more productive.

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         jansharesposted 15 months agoin reply to this

         

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   eugbugposted 15 months ago

   GA4 tells me the average engagement time for my top 5 articles by traffic is around 10 to 15 seconds. Is that how long they stay on the page?

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      Glenn Stokposted 15 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, I believe so, Eugene. I see similar stats with my GA4. But the old version showed that data too. I remember when my hubs held readers interest much longer, ten years ago, when HubPages only had three ads per page.
      
      One has to wonder if that had anything to do with it. It’s interesting that we made over five times more money with just three ads. HubPages still shows that data on the our earnings history page.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 15 months agoin reply to this

         It's not something I have expertise on but I believe internet advertising has got tougher over the years. I remember when HP ads were first introduced and the CPMs were really high.
         
         You could make a reasonable amount of money with just a moderate amount of views at that point. However, CPMs gradually shrank over time.
         
         Before the Hub Ads, it was generally only possible to earn anything meaningful by using Amazon Affiliates. Adsense earnings were mostly meager.
         
         Nowadays, I think the tendency for companies is to either go for a big (irritating) video ad or have lots of smaller static ads. It's a wider trend, not only peculiar to HP.
         
         Having been in this game for twelve years, I'm coming to the conclusion that the best earning potential comes from selling products or services on your own site. Earning from ads is tough and, if anything, seems to get harder.
         
         Of course, things would improve if HP views dramatically recovered. However, I don't think that the ad market's going to get better anytime soon. I suspect that we're stuck with either huge vids or multiple smaller static ads.

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            eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

            They could experiment and reduce the number of ads dramatically to see if engagement increases to a greater degree. There's nothing to lose only revenue for the duration of the experiment. And that's if it actually does drop. Does Hubpages actually sell advertising on the sites now and are they bound to contracts for those ads? They used to run an ad looking for companies to advertise, but I no longer see that and ads just seem to be Google ones.

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               PaulGoodman67posted 15 months agoin reply to this

               Data analysis and experimentation are how advertising strategies are developed. It seems unlikely to me that they would employ a team that didn't understand the basics.
               
               They've certainly experimented previously with having a small number of ads and the big video ads. I presume that those were found to be lacking regarding revenue.
               
               I think a good way to learn about advertising is to run your own site and do the advertising yourself. Often you see that human interactions can be counterintuitive when you look at the data.
               
               I don't believe it's easy to just look at a page and judge how effective the ads are. Most people are criticizing the aesthetics of the ads, which is a value judgment and fair enough, but I think the revenue element is the priority. Understanding revenue is best done through data and number-crunching.
               
               I am here because I'm primarily a writer. I got weary of figuring out the advertising on my sites. We have no involvement with the advertising here.

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                  eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

                  No, but there's no harm us making suggestions, but I guess they get totally peed off listening to us telling them how to run their business.

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                     Glenn Stokposted 15 months agoin reply to this

                     Along that line of thought, Eugene, I believe the problem is due to TAG being a publicly traded company. So, they don't pay attention to anything we suggest. They only listen to shareholders, who do not necessarily understand what works best for SEO.
                     
                     After attending the Maven/HubPages conference in Canada in 2018, I bought a small amount of Maven stock because things sounded so good then. But I see it going down since then. My shares were automatically converted to TAG when they took over.

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                        eugbugposted 15 months agoin reply to this

                        I presume the logic behind them taking over lots of companies is that some of them will do well eventually, and if if they have a large enough portfolio, that makes up for the losses. there was a big drop in stock value mid March and it has plateaued since then. I wonder what caused that?

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