Google analytics has a free software which they provide called Google Analytics.   Google Analytics has been running behind the face of Realneo for about 3 years.  From time to time one or another of the admins on Realneo has posted details, screen grabs, or other info from Google Analytics - either to make a point or just to inform the realneo audience regarding who is watching realneo.

It is my goal to eventually make the Google Analytics data base for realneo available to all users of Realneo so that each user can look through the statistics and use their review for whatever purpose they choose.

The statistics are extremely detailed, and thus interpretation of them is very complicated.  Google actually provides both free and tuition required classes on how to read and analyize Google Analytics.  You can spend hours and hours looking through the data and postulating what the data means.    I think colleges will (should) very soon offer PHD's in Google Analytics.

So here is one tidbit I just looked at:   On June 29, 2011 the 11th most visited page on Realneo was "if senate bill 5 passes ohio legislature we will no longer have right collective bargaining".   [The post was provided by Quest Ministries as a copy and paste of (as I understand it) an email notice from from Tracey Conaty of AFSCME e-Action Network. The links in the post now go to a AFSCME web page which is "temporarilly disabled".  Quest took a public email of which Quest was aware, and by placing it on the web made the email available to the globe - so that's original content in my estimation] 

Besides that it was the 11th most visited page (which is not terribly significant),  what was significant  was that the average person looking at that post spent 11:20 minutes on that page.    11:20 minutes was the longest page dwell on reaneo for that day - most page dwells are less than a minute. 

I speculate that the long page dwell is because people who are reading the page are public employees who are concerned about the possibility of losing their bargaining rights and thus some of the income - so their personal finacial interests are causing them to read and consider the post as a real life issue - not merely an entertainment read.  The long page dwell was also probably a result of the reader clicking on the links to their legislators - while they were on the link the page remained open"dwelling" as read time.    So what is significant in the Google stats is not that so many people read the report (only 20) but that they were so concerned that they spend 11:20 on the page. (see how Google can now direct its ads?!)

I write about this one Google Analytics stat because I believe it is important for every reporter - here on realneo and elsewhere - to recognize that what they write about can, and does, help build understanding for ideas - and help build support/lack of support for every  current idea in our society.  

What is very important is not how many people your content reaches, but how intensly your content impacts the people who read it.     Your post may not get a lot of reads, BUT HOW MANY MINDS DID IT PURSUADE?  Does more dwell time on a page mean that your post is being considered more seriously, more deeply?  I would think so.

I don't play golf, but I believe that changing one mind through civil discourse has got to be at least as satisfying as a hole in one....