My Blog Was Taking Credit It Didn’t Earn

Every so often I open my blog analytics just to feel something, and last month I got a real gut-punch: Skincare was apparently my top-performing category by a mile. Which was strange, because I could’ve sworn my conversation about the saturated pilates space was the one people actually shared.

Turns out I’d set up my own categories wrong. I tag posts loosely — half my “this trend is nonsense” posts touch Skincare + pilates + nutrition, because that’s just how skepticism works; it doesn’t stay in its lane. So when I looked at pageviews “by category,” one popular post was getting counted for every single category it touched. It wasn’t that Skincare was winning. It was that Skincare kept borrowing credit from posts that weren’t really about skincare at all.

Once I made myself pick just one main category per post, the actual, honest home for it, the whole leaderboard changed. Nutrition took the top spot, easily. Skincare dropped to the middle of the pack, which stung a little, but at least it was true.

It’s a small, boring fix, but it changed how I read every stat since. Any time a number rolls several things up into one big total, it’s worth asking who’s actually getting credit for what, because it’s shockingly easy for one thing to get counted twice while looking like two separate wins. I’d rather have a smaller number I can trust than a big one that’s secretly cheating.