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Google has been releasing India-only apps and features at a steady pace in recent times, and the latest offering from Google targeted at Indian bloggers. The Blog Compass app is designed for bloggers and content creators, and Google aims to ease the task of website management such as traffic assessment, activity tracking as well as discovering relevant content.
Blog Compass is currently listed as a beta app on the Play Store and is only available for users based in India. Google describes the app as ‘A new one-stop shop app for bloggers that help you track the metrics, find new topics to write about, and more’.
In addition to website management and monitoring tools, Blog Compass also offers suggestions regarding the topics one should write about based on a blogger’s interest, field expertise and relevant content that is trending. Also, the app doles out tips that can help users improve the quality of content they post and increase the traffic. The app is currently compatible with only two platforms, WordPress and Blogger.
The app, which has support for both Hindi and English, has a simple user interface and automatically connects to your Blogger or WordPress account if they are linked with the same Google account as the one used to access the Google Play Services. During the set-up process, the app also asks users to connect their Google Analytics account for more in-depth information such as per-page traffic, visitor demographics, etc.
As far as activity monitoring is considered, the app allows users to check metrics such as traffic source, Google search queries and visitor overview on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual basis. The app’s Topics section is divided into two categories, a personalized suggestions area which is populated by topics based on users’ interests and a trending area, which lists related topics that are currently generating traffic.
Blog Compass will also award badges based on the views generated and the number of posts a blogger has published. The app also has a Learning Center where one can learn the fundamentals of blogging as well as some advanced skills such as image and content optimization, ad management and website promotion among others.
I tried using this application and was surprised to see “JetPack” plugin as a mandate requirement for a self-hosted WP blog.
I am operating a self-hosted blog from so many years and have discarded JetPack long ago.
I as a long-time user of WP would request the devs to not keep JetPack as a mandatory requirement just to use this application.
Many bloggers like me aren’t using JetPack and in order to use this application, they would be forced to use JetPack which I personally feel serves no meaning.
I hope app devs will took this scenario under consideration amd will release a version wherein we won’t be required to have JetPack installed beforehand.