>Really, they are not even tracking visits, they are tracking times the link is requested. So everytime the HN page gets updated, that link is getting clicked b

>Really, they are not even tracking visits, they are tracking times the link is requested. So everytime the HN page gets updated, that link is getting clicked by the dozen or so bots that trawl that page. Very true. I do think metrics are always a balance between precision and ease of collection, and counting IP addresses is definitely towards the ease of collection side. Regarding the bots crawling HN submissions, that would be backed up by an even higher rate of Cloudflare:Squarespace visitors for this submission (about 10:1 vs about 8:1). >You should really be looking at trends, and so long as you pick a number that is consistently measured as your baseline, you can leave well enough alone. Thanks for the perspective here - a kind reader sent me a similar message via email as well! The nice thing is that I don't have particular goals for my personal blog, so these analytics numbers feel more like interesting trivia than some OKR metric that I need to increase somehow.