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Bought a Domain - ModernSimpleLiving.com

Website & Analytics

Launch of Dedicated Domain ModernSimpleLiving.com

Domain purchase, setup, and surprising traffic insights

Table of Contents

① Finding a Domain Name
② Custom Domain Setup
③ Domain Costs
④ Google Search Console
⑤ Learning New Things
⑥ Traffic Insights

Introduction

Decided it was time to move my blog to a dedicated domain and officially purchased ModernSimpleLiving.com. While there are plenty of online tutorials that walk through the technical steps of purchasing and setting up a domain, the hardest part was actually finding a suitable name that hadn't already been registered.


Section I

Setup Custom Domain in Blogger

The setup process itself was straightforward. Although it can take 24–48 hours for everything to fully propagate, my domain was up and running in about 90 minutes.

Section II

Cost of Registered Domain

For a new domain GoDaddy had a special for 1st year $4.99 and each subsequent year $21.99. I bought the 2 year renewal plan and if I like the domain, I'll likely buy a longer renewal option next time of 10 years.

Period Cost Per Year Notes
Year 1 $4.99 GoDaddy promotional rate
Year 2+ $21.99 Standard renewal rate

Section III

Google Search Console — Manually Request Indexing

After 24 days since buying this domain, I still don't see it in Google Search. This was due to Google not having added it to its index. You can expedite this by going to Google Search Console and requesting they index it.

Pro tip: Don't wait for organic indexing. Use Google Search Console to submit your domain manually and dramatically reduce indexing time.

Section IV

Fun Learning New Things

It was kinda fun setting up a domain and configuring this blog. It's impressive as you have to modify HTML code and learn some basics of DNS and other things. The various online tutorials and guides are quite good.

Section V

Web Stats — 2014 ~ 2025

I'm still not sure what I posted in early 2014 that resonated so strongly, especially since it was during my first few weeks of blogging. Unfortunately, I deleted quite a few posts from that period. It's possible some of those early pieces performed exceptionally well—something I haven't been able to replicate until recently.

Nov 2025, I finally enabled Google Analytics out of curiosity. Something is clearly driving renewed interest, and for fun, I wanted to understand what's resonating so I can apply those insights to future content.

My hunch is that 2025 coincided with the rise of ChatGPT and other AI-powered search tools, which may be scanning and resurfacing older content across the internet.

What's most startling is this: since January 2014, the site has accumulated 132k page visits, yet 34k of those occurred in 2025 alone. That concentration strongly suggests something fundamental has shifted in the past year.

Observation: 26% of all traffic from the past 11 years arrived in a single year, suggesting AI indexing or algorithmic changes may be reshaping content discovery patterns.

Traffic Summary

Period Page Visits Percentage of Total
2014 ~ 2024 98k 74%
2025 34k 26%
Total (2014 ~ 2025) 132k 100%

I'm also anticipating another bump in page visits now that I have a dedicated domain name as I'm able to search for my blog on google.com.

Documenting the launch of ModernSimpleLiving.com and surprising insights into organic traffic patterns and search engine indexing in the age of AI.

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