Time Log – Time Spent on Other Students’ Sites

Date: Feb. 16, 2026 From: 06:15pm To: 06:25pm
Date: Feb. 16, 2026 From: 08:05pm To: 08:15pm
Date: Feb. 16, 2026 From: 09:10pm To: 09:20pm
Date: Feb. 16, 2026 From: 07:40pm To: 07:50pm

Summary of Activities and New Contents Created

This week, I expanded my CMS by creating two new audience-focused posts: “What If Aliens Already Visited And Decided to Stay Silent?” and “What If the Algorithm Is Quietly Reshaping Who You Are?” Both posts were designed to stimulate curiosity and critical thinking while encouraging visitor interaction through comments. The first post explores the implications of advanced civilizations potentially observing humanity without interference, raising questions about technological maturity and ethical development. The second post examines how algorithmic systems-especially those used in social media and recommendation engines-may subtly influence identity formation, decision-making, and exposure to information. Each post was integrated into both the General Menu (for public audience organization) and the HW6 section (for grading structure). Categories and tags were assigned strategically to improve content organization and discoverability.

  • What If Aliens Already Visited And Decided to Stay Silent?
  • What If the Algorithm Is Quietly Reshaping Who You Are?

Summary of My GA4 Exploration

googleanalytics

For this assignment, I created a Free Form Exploration in Google Analytics 4 to analyze active users by city and device category over the last 14 days. I used “City” as the row dimension, “Device category” as the column dimension, and “Active users” as the primary metric. I compared the US segment with Mobile traffic to understand user behavior differences. The results showed that most visitors accessed the site via desktop (7 users) compared to mobile (2 users). Seattle generated the highest engagement, followed by smaller contributions from cities such as Boardman, Phoenix, and Redmond. Interestingly, Columbus and Salt Lake City appeared only under mobile traffic. This exploration provided insight into geographic reach, device preference, and audience behavior patterns, helping identify opportunities for improving mobile optimization and expanding reach beyond local traffic sources.

New Insights Observed in My Site

Before implementing GA4 exploration, I primarily focused on content creation rather than behavioral patterns. Through this analysis, I began to recognize how limited but measurable traffic patterns reflect real user behavior. For example, the dominance of desktop usage suggests that my primary audience may be classmates accessing the site through laptops. The presence of mobile-only traffic from cities outside Seattle indicates potential organic or shared link visits. I also observed how segmentation allows clearer understanding of user groups rather than looking at total traffic alone. These insights demonstrated that analytics is not just about counting visits, but about interpreting behavioral signals that guide content optimization and design decisions.

References

Google. Google Analytics 4 Help Center. Google, https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10089681.

InfoTrust. “Introduction to Google Analytics 4.” 2020.

Chinonso Emma-Ebere. “Introduction to Google Analytics 4.” December 21, 2020.

Google Analytics YouTube Channel. GA4 Overview and Explore Tutorials.