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is it possible the "Clicks" stats are off?

  1. yiotta
    Member

    Hello,

    My posts are nothing if not just a bunch of links collected for users to click and view at external webpages so I'm curious if the "Click" stats are off/not working because according to the stats, folks view my posts but aren't clicking on any of the links which are everywhere. This is something I'm noticing not just today but everyday.

    Maybe it truly is the case that folks are just reading the text and not clicking on the links or just glancing on and off the page but I was just wondering if there's a possibility that the Click stats are off.

    Here's my stats for today: http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/stats-september-18-2012/?preview=true&preview_id=1895&preview_nonce=afb88c0b77

    I know my stats are low but I'd like to make it work so that what little viewers I do get will get the most out of the posts they happen upon--the links.

    Anybody notice this? Or am I just not understanding stuff?

    Thanks...

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

  2. raincoaster
    Member

    Well, having looked at your site a snippet of text followed by a ton of internal links is not tremendously tempting.

    Links WITHIN the blog don't count as clicks. Only outbound links count as clicks.

  3. yiotta
    Member

    @raincoaster,

    Did you just looking at the Home, About or intro posts? Because most of the other posts are filled with external, outbound links, not internal.

    Every page or post has all the internal links at the bottom for easy navigation but most of the posts--aside from the aforementioned--have external, outbound links.

    Thanks for your response thus far...

  4. yiotta
    Member

    Sorry, I had meant: Are you just looking...

  5. timethief
    Member

    Read this please > http://en.support.wordpress.com/stats/#clicks

  6. notawoodpecker
    Member

    Web stats of any kind should never be considered as anything more than estimates.

    Could yours be off? Possibly. Maybe even probably.

  7. timethief
    Member

    I clicked into one of the posts and found the entire text was embedded with external links. Surely you don't expect readers to click out on all of them, do you? I found the number of external links in the text to be such an annoyance that I can't even recall what the text was attempting to communicate. I clicked out feeling thoroughly peeved of.

  8. timethief
    Member

    of = off

  9. raincoaster
    Member

    If you need me to look at more than the Home and About pages, give me a link.

  10. yiotta
    Member

    @raincoaster,
    if you wanna give it a shot, try (or any of the episode 04's): http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/04-6b-once-upon-a-time-in-youtubeepisode-6b/

    @timethief,
    sorry i found a way to annoy you to the point of being thoroughly peeved off, but believe it or not, that's good to know...

    @notawoodpecker,
    dunno what to say except sadness.

  11. emahadeo
    Member

    Yesterday and today I have gotten "likes" and follows on my blog but the views are not showing up. For example- 6 likes between yesterday and today for 1 specific post, but only 3 views. This makes no sense so there is an issue here. I would like to know what I have to do to fix this.

  12. thegiddygoat
    Member

    @emahadeo it makes perfect sense because people can like (and follow) your posts from the Reader, without the need to ever go on to your blog. Only an actual visit to your blog will count as a 'hit'. 'Likes' are not views.

  13. emahadeo
    Member

    No kidding! Thank you very much I didn't realize. So it's likely we are reaching more people than you can see from the official stats page. Is there some way to track this?

  14. thegiddygoat
    Member

    Track what? You already know if someone 'likes' from the Reader. You can't track what people are viewing from the Reader unless they click on it. The Reader is on infinite scroll and has hundreds and hundreds of posts.

  15. yiotta
    Member

    so i put up today's stats page to question the "Clicks" stats again.

    today, it shows one click to WordPress.com which is totally weird because i don't have any links to WordPress.com.

  16. yiotta
    Member

    sorry, here's the link:
    http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1912&action=edit&message=6

  17. yiotta
    Member

    yikes, here it is?
    http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1912&action=edit&message=1

  18. yiotta
    Member

    having a bad day.

    here it is:
    http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/stats-september-20-2012/

    FINALLY!

  19. notawoodpecker
    Member

    Really don't get the issue here. Stats are irrelevant.

    You seem to be spending a whole lot of time worrying about something that doesn't matter.

  20. timethief
    Member

    @notawoodpecker
    Perhaps the preponderance of clicks are specifically designed to drive traffic to specific sites and the concern is focused on that not being successful.

  21. yiotta
    Member

    i'm having WWIII going on in the background in my living room right now with my extended family on opposing sides so i'm going to not sweat the stats right now (or ever, to the delight of many i'm sure).

    i hadn't meant to make a big deal of this; just wanted to know if others noticed it and knew what the deal was, so thanks to all who took the time to post responses... it's all good...

  22. raincoaster
    Member

    If you continue to give us links to pages that do not come up for us, we will never be able to help you.

  23. raincoaster
    Member

    Mind you, the difficulty with those links might be the reason you're not seeing the clicks you expect. You have to be able to format links correctly and give people links to places they can actually land. You keep giving us links to your dashboard that we can't click through and your last link goes to a PAGE NOT FOUND. If you're formatting the rest of your links like that, there's your problem.

  24. yiotta
    Member

    @raincoaster

    Mea culpa: I thought that even if I made a post "private," as long as I provided the URL, it would be viewable to anybody (like what you can do in YouTube).

    The only thing that I wanted to show on those unviewable pages was the only item that came up on the "Clicks" stats was WordPress.com, which I don't ever link to from any of my pages/posts.

    So if you were to check out any of my pages/posts, you would find links to external, outbound sites, but I wasn't sure if the "Click" stats reported those clicks.

    If the earlier link I gave, specifically to you at: http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/04-6b-once-upon-a-time-in-youtubeepisode-6b/, didn't work, then yeah, that's a problem.

  25. raincoaster
    Member

    The links on that page work for me, but I'm with TT. The more you put in, the less incentive there is to click on any particular link. I once did a post with 36 links that took me over six hours to write, and hardly anyone clicks, but they DO hover to see the alt text and where the links to. I cannot imagine many people want to interrupt reading a narrative to go watch a YouTube. I think the problem in this case is the content.

  26. notawoodpecker
    Member

    My point is that just because they're not being counted where you can see them doesn't mean they're not being counted at the other end -- where the link leads.

    People use all sorts of privacy and anti-tracking/referral blocking utilities specifically to stop this sort of thing. They simply may not want you to know what they're doing or clicking on.

    I do much like RC suggests. I hover over a link sometimes, but rarely (if ever) click on a ink in any article. What I may do is copy and paste the link into another browser window, or even another browser; I usually have 3 running.

    I don't like being tracked and I don't like sites counting my visits and clicks to try and make money off me.

    Again, stats don't mean squat. There are all kinds of ways to get around click-trackers, both active and passive.

  27. thegiddygoat
    Member

    Following on from what notawoodpecker has said, the stats can never be accurate because people DO use 'do not track' options these days, and you could be having views that you know absolutely nothing about. And a lot of views are from spammers or content thieves anyway!! It makes watching stats all rather irrelevant. Genuine hits are usually quite low anyway.

  28. yiotta
    Member

    Good to hear all of this.

    It does take a lot of time to find the links but I probably won't stop doing it altogether--just less. It entertains me to find stuff plus I learn/enjoy new things that I thought I could share (or not) with viewers. I'll finish up the episodic chapter 4 with the links galore, and then go back to "normal" posting.

    Again, thanks for spending the time to tell me things I now know...

  29. raincoaster
    Member

    To increase clicks, work on your alt text. Make it amusing and intriguing. right now you don't have any. "goes to some freaking youtube" is all the info anyone can glean from your links.

  30. yiotta
    Member

    Hmmm...

    I thought it was self-evident the links directly related to the text the links were found on. I'll have to work on that in the future although I'm wrapping stuff up on that episodic chapter 4 so I may not have to deal with this sometime soon.

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