You may all be aware of the thought experiment: ‘If a tree falls in a wood, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’
In the world of website analytics, I often think about the following (somewhat clumsy) analogy to this:
‘If a webpage gets published on a website, and no-one ever views it, does it still exist?’
The point being that large academic websites can contain thouands of pages, and there are often many requests to *publish* content…but not always the same clamour to *promote* content (either from other pages on the same website or through external channels such as email and social media).
Sometimes content is also created that is not properly annotated in a way that makes it discoverable by search engines (which can include your website’s own search tool).
Website analytics platforms will tell you when a page has had a ‘hit’. They do *not* tell tell you when a page has had zero hits. To find this out you have to a) make a list of all web pages and b) cross-reference that against data from your website analytics platform.
There are web pages out there which no-one knows about because no-one ever views them, and so they don’t get logged in the analytics. Maybe they are lurking there, flying low under the radar, waiting for the day where they will be rediscovered. Or maybe they have ceased to exist.
Love your website content.
Care for your website content.
It is waiting to be noticed.
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