WordPress.com

1. heatherstark
   Member
   Jan 17, 2011, 11:54 AM

   I am puzzled by the very large difference between A. page views that bit.ly tracks, for my posts, and B. the page/post views that are showing up in WordPress stats.
   My typical process is that immediately after I publish, I get a bit.ly shortener for my post, and then I publicise the shortener via my usual channels (which would typically be twitter, facebook status, linked in status, and maybe some linked in groups depending on the content of the post). My expectation is that most of my traffic would come from this type of push notification. However what I am seeing from my stats is quite different.
   What I am seeing from my bit.ly stats is very very low uptake. My bit.ly promotions are only driving about 20% of my views, roughly speaking. OK it's perfectly possible that one explation for this is that my bit.ly promotions just aren't very effective! But if this is so, then it's a puzzle to me what actually is going on with getting readers, as clearly people are finding me somehow. I do have some subscribers, but not so very many, and according to WordPress stats I also regularly pick up readers from organic search on google, but these search referrers are highly concentrated on driving traffic to a few posts. Also I get some spammy referrers but not a huge number. So if you add up my bit.ly views, and my subscriber numbers, and my google type of organic search traffic, and my spammy referrers, there's still a pretty big mystery segment. Say, half my views. The only guess I can make is that they are coming from feed subscribers, but this doesn't feel right to me. Any ideas?

   The blog I need help with is insightanalysis.wordpress.com.

2. raincoaster
   Member
   Jan 18, 2011, 6:15 AM

   It'd be easier if you copy/pasted your stats, especially Referrers in so we could give some feedback. All I can suggest from this information is that for most blogs, the majority of hits do not come through search engines. They are regular readers who have your URL in their browser history.

3. heatherstark
   Member
   Feb 10, 2011, 10:58 AM

   Thanks. What you suggest is certainly a possibility - but I don't post often enough to have it be worth anyone's while to check daily unless they REALLY had nothing else to do. I am getting a better handle on what's going on, though. For my blog, this is that LinkedIn is far better than Twitter, for recruiting/reminding viewers. Perhaps this is because I am not getting my key phrases right on Twitter. Also Google reliably drives traffic, but mostly to one particular post I did last summer. I have no doubt that this pattern is kind of unusual in general - though probably it is not unusual for the kind of content I am producing which, to put it politely, is very niche. (Although I obviously think it is very interesting...!)

4. hallluke
   Member
   Feb 10, 2011, 12:44 PM

   I'm not familiar with the bit.ly stats but could it be possible that they're reporting how many people clicked your links to view your posts whereas wordpress stats are showing how many page views you get, not independent visitors. So if someone follows a bit.ly link and then clicks through several posts and pages wordpress stats will count it as multiple views but bit.ly stats only as one referral? I might be completely wrong however.

5. raincoaster
   Member
   Feb 11, 2011, 3:59 AM

   What I meant was not that you should post them daily, but that you should post the EXACT stats you find confusing so we can look at them and analyze them.

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