WordPress.com Forums » Topic: wordpress.com as referrer

matt on "wordpress.com as referrer"

matt — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:02:40 +0000

Going to close this because I'm not sure what people are asking for anymore -- people seem similarly mad that their stats were high or low, or that numbers don't add up exactly with what some third-party tracking system says.

If you see "wordpress.com" in your referrers, it's means it's traffic coming from our new social stuff like the reader on the homepage, or tags, or Freshly Pressed. These things are driving a ton of pageviews, so it will be noticeable on your stats, especially if you use the subscription widget or encourage people to follow you some other way.

However I don't want to leave anyone hanging, and happy to look into individual blog issues over Thanksgiving week. Going to close this thread, but start a new one (with a single question) and tag it "formatt" and I'll take a look.

kwesiwa on "wordpress.com as referrer"

kwesiwa — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:00:53 +0000

I'm hosting a week-long program on my blog this week and as expected it has brought quite a number of visits to the site. In fact, it is my best week ever. However, the stats are skewed due to the bloated stats from wordpress.com referrer week.

It's incredible that WP Support has still not bothered to offer any coherent explanation of what happened. Not even an acknowledgment that they are aware of our pleas for attention on this matter. I don't know what to make of this development given that Support is usually very good and responsive to most issues.

Well, I guess we will continue to wait...

kevinfromcanada on "wordpress.com as referrer"

kevinfromcanada — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:36:26 +0000

I am now moving to completely believe in the conspiracy theory on this issue. I am guessing that a hacker got into WordPress, messed with the program and was the source of the WordPress.com referrer problem in the first place.

Not only that, while the staff was off on their "offsite", the hacker came into this discussion as both Macmanx and Matt and left false messages about what had happened (note how neither of these two has returned to the discussion for more than two weeks, even though they were supposedly "away" when it started).

WordPress doesn't want to admit that it -- indeed its "founder" -- got hacked and misrepresented to those of us who count on it. So they are hoping that it will just quietly go away. Frankly, it doesn't look like that is going to happen.

We all understand hacking. Why not fess up to what really happened?

itspaki on "wordpress.com as referrer"

itspaki — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:01:02 +0000

One of the referrers of mine is wordpress dashboard what does it mean.
and another referrer is a website which does not contain any link of mine
strange.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:43:43 +0000

It is fine if we don't get any explanation ever, but this thread of 150 plus comments is an evidence of WordPress ignoring this issue.

wank on "wordpress.com as referrer"

wank — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:28:47 +0000

Since it's now almost a month since their failed stats experiment, it seems very unlikely you will get any explanations now.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:39:01 +0000

Has the support staff provided any update on this anywhere else?

budgiehypoth on "wordpress.com as referrer"

budgiehypoth — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:19:58 +0000

Dear Support Staff, could we please get any update on this? Thanks.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:33:34 +0000

Dear Support Staff, could we please get any update on this? Thanks.

wank on "wordpress.com as referrer"

wank — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:07:42 +0000

Have you tried contacting support directly? I don't rate your chances of getting a straight answer out of them but it might be harder for them to ignore a support request than a forum thread.

kevinfromcanada on "wordpress.com as referrer"

kevinfromcanada — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:17:54 +0000

I am very disappointed that WordPress feels determined not to give us an explanation on an issue that obviously has one -- this seems to be a very strange case of total user-unfriendliness.

seanolsen on "wordpress.com as referrer"

seanolsen — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:15:17 +0000

Bumping this back up so it doesn't fade too far away.

wank on "wordpress.com as referrer"

wank — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:53:05 +0000

There is no paid upgrade for stats.

Yes, that would be why I pointed out that none of us are paying for them. Your purchase of other upgrades is irrelevant. You may be a paying customer, but the things you are paying for do not include stats. If they want to experiment with them or even remove them entirely, they can. And if they don't feel like explaining what's happening, there's nothing you can do to compel them.

My point was that it is highly unlikely any of Automattic's VIP clients are using the inhouse stats system and nothing else. It is also highly unlikely that if CNN or Techcrunch noticed a significant blip in their stats and asked for an explanation that they would be ignored.

dribblingpensioner on "wordpress.com as referrer"

dribblingpensioner — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:00:04 +0000

@ TT , i was giving an answer to this post on page 6, i read your link and i don't think thats for the likes of me or ordinary bloggers, so i still say its one setting for all :)

I very much doubt that any of wordpress.com's VIP customers have had their stats messed up. If you want reliability and accountability, you're going to have to pay for it.

timethief on "wordpress.com as referrer"

timethief — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:18:11 +0000

@dribblingpensioner,

I believe there is no such thing as wordpress.COM vip members, its one setting for all.

Please see here > VIP Services: Support & Hosting

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:07:25 +0000

dribblingpensioner, would you mind identifying which other things people are waiting for to get answers from the blog support? I have had my blog here for more than 5 years and I do not recall coming across the type of problem we are discussing lately with the stats.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:04:32 +0000

wank, that's not true. VIP accounts are few and selective. The rest of the bloggers on wordpress.com are also potentially paying for one upgrade or another. There is no paid upgrade for stats.

dribblingpensioner on "wordpress.com as referrer"

dribblingpensioner — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:22:55 +0000

Your right we do not have to be given an answer since wordpress. com is free. I believe there is no such thing as wordpress.COM vip members, its one setting for all.

wank on "wordpress.com as referrer"

wank — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:02:28 +0000

Unfortunately, since none of us pay anything for our stats, nobody has to provide any explanations or excuses for screwing them up.

I very much doubt that any of wordpress.com's VIP customers have had their stats messed up. If you want reliability and accountability, you're going to have to pay for it.

dribblingpensioner on "wordpress.com as referrer"

dribblingpensioner — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:22:20 +0000

@ kevinfromcanada, there were a few things months ago people wanted to know about and we are still waiting :)

brookewilkerson on "wordpress.com as referrer"

brookewilkerson — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:50:57 +0000

Hey, everyone - I've been following this thread since the second day when I noticed the weirdness with the wordpress.com referrer. I had a lot of the same questions everyone else did but was just patiently waiting for some explanation. (In the past when I have stumped wordpress support with a weird problem, I've waited 2 weeks for a reply that implies they "don't know" but gives me some tech support basic busy-work. Magically, the problem usually goes away after I have alerted them, even if they don't answer my question.)

Today, however, my stats are weird again - it doesn't have to do with the referrer problem but maybe it is evidence of support messing with the numbers. I had my all-time highest traffic day back in September before the referrer problem, but today that high traffic number is 27 views lower than it was before. (I had the number memorized because it has been at the top of the stats page for so long - that's why I noticed it had changed.)

Anyone else notice any changes to their stats history?

kevinfromcanada on "wordpress.com as referrer"

kevinfromcanada — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:25:45 +0000

dribblingpensioner: I got more than 1,400 wordpress referrer hits in the week that the glitch existed -- just under 10 per cent of my total for that week. Since it has disappeared, the numbers appear to be back to what was "normal" before.

For the life of me, I can't understand why WordPress is not offering any information. I can't help but wonder if someone successfully hacked into the site and they are reluctant to admit a vulnerablity -- that seems the only explanation for the silence.

dribblingpensioner on "wordpress.com as referrer"

dribblingpensioner — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:57:53 +0000

@ ismailimail, i never had a problem with wordpress referrer i would only have about 5 - 6 a day from it.
But i have read some people would get 100s.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:51:44 +0000

wank, if this bump in the traffic was a bug, than WordPress should fix it not just by eliminating the wordpress.com as a referrer (which they did) but they should also eliminate the extra surge in the traffic from our individual blog stats. However, I do not expect the founder of this platform to speak without any real knowledge, so as of now, the status quo is that we are being undercounted but there has been no further explanation.

ismailimail on "wordpress.com as referrer"

ismailimail — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:48:17 +0000

dribblingpensioner, Matt said that we are undercounted only after we saw the bump in the traffic But we have now gone back to the same old stats as the wordpress.com as a referrer (which was the cause of the bump) has now disappeared. So things have not been fixed because technically we are still being undercounted.

wank on "wordpress.com as referrer"

wank — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:00:54 +0000

I expect that whoever is working on this is cursing Matt for jumping into this thread. If he hadn't said that thing about your stats being undercounted they could have passed off the leap as a bug that has now been fixed, but now they have to either justify their decision to continue 'undercounting' or try to explain that their boss doesn't know what he's talking about. Rock, hard place.

budgiehypoth on "wordpress.com as referrer"

budgiehypoth — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 12:46:43 +0000

As I pointed out last week, I had only recently started a blog here (after shutting down a nine years' old blog elsewhere).

Part of what attracted me here was the detailed stats.

The jump in page views made me feel rather good about transferring, feeling that the new style of the blog, and the entries I was writing was actually getting some traction.

Of course, now, that goodwill has evaporated as I don't have a clue how many people are genuinely seeing the blog.

I fail to understand why we haven't had even a "I'm sorry guys - we're working on it" form WordPress since 25th October, almost a full two weeks ago.

theloneswimmer on "wordpress.com as referrer"

theloneswimmer — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 12:04:13 +0000

I can't understand why such a major issue for WP customers isn't being clearly communicated. We never received any update, the issue is even hard to find on the forums. I had planned a thank you at 50k views for my readers. I don't know if it will be next week, according the new dropped pageviews, or whether it happened weeks or months ago if things were undercounted. Are they under, exact or over now? We just don't know.

Many seem at pains to point out they are not annoyed. I am. I would be happy with a problem being dealt with, if it was explained to us.

dribblingpensioner on "wordpress.com as referrer"

dribblingpensioner — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:33:02 +0000

@ ismailimail, yes Matt did say we were being undercounted so maybe it has been fixed and these are the true figures from now on.

spinningstar on "wordpress.com as referrer"

spinningstar — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:02:57 +0000

Well, at least in a few days the increase in the traffic will roll off the daily stats screen so it will be easier to see what remains. However, in the weekly stats, there is still an impression that someone, somewhere is giving us all the finger. It gave me a good laugh.