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Number of followers displayed not matching actual number of subscribers

  1. jessicakorteman
    Member

    Hi,

    I have included the 'follow blog via email' widget and have opted to display how many people are currently following my blog. However, the number of people I have noted as subscribing from the email notifications I have received does not match this figure.

    I checked my site stats to view the email addresses of those who have subscribed. While most are there, some are randomly missing. I understand that only active subscribers are displayed and that it is possible that some people may have unsubscribed but it seems to be randomly missing some subscriptions, even when I was informed of the new subscription via email only a few hours earlier.

    Today, for example, I received three new subscription notifications to my email address, but only the first and last one are displayed. The middle one is someone I know very well and it seems unlikely they would subscribe and then immediately unsubscribe. This person is someone I invited to follow and they are shown as having accepted my invitation when I check this via the 'users' tab. However, they are not shown as one of my active subscribers and hence the widget is showing a figure lower than actual subscriptions.

    This seems to be the case with some other subscribers but they often respond to me about my posts and have confirmed they still receive notifications despite not being listed within wordpress as one of my active subscribers.

    Is there anything that can be done to rectify this? It would be great if the widget was able to accurately reflect the number of subscribers.

    Many thanks.

    The blog I need help with is jessicakorteman.com.

  2. sheanaochoa
    Member

    Hi, my problem is different. When I try seeing my followers. There's a certain number of subscribers that I can actually see in site stats. Then theres Facebook Followers that I can't see.

    Are these people actually following me? Do they receive a new post? Because I have no record of them I don't know who I still need to ask to follow me, nor to I really know who is actually following me.

    Thanks for any help.

  3. michaelcargill
    Member

    Yeah, it's gone weird for me as well. I have 69 email subscribers who clicked on the email subscriber widget but it's displaying 306 on my blog due to it including some of my Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

  4. becomingcliche
    Member

    I've either gained 100 followers overnight (yay, me!), or there's a glitch in counting subscribers. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it's the former, but...

  5. airodyssey
    Member

    Hi to all. I believe WordPress.com is counting your followers on Twitter and/or Facebook as well now. Does that answer your question?

  6. michaelcargill
    Member

    It does and I said as much earlier.

    It's a bit stupid really as it completely inflates the alleged popularity of a blog - hardly any of my Facebook and Twitter followers/friends actually look at my blog.

  7. valentlau
    Member

    how does a Facebook follower work? I stopped using publish to fb ages ago since it was buggy and crappy.

    Anyway wanted to say a lot of times followers don't get emails about new posts, depending on how the post 'ticked over' to being published.

    annoying but well

  8. michaelcargill
    Member

    A Facebook follower is just someone who is on your Facebook friends list, I don't know why they are classed as 'followers' as it is a bit misleading.

    With regards to followers not getting emails: Are you sure that those people actually subscribed to get email updates? Followers and subscribers are different but it isn't really explained very well.

    A follower won't get any emails but will see your blog updates when they go to WordPress.com and click on the 'Read' tab.

    A subscriber will get email updates and will also be able to see your blog updates on WordPress.com. You need to use the email widget to get subscribers I believe.

  9. kennethmarkhoover
    Member

    Yes, they are now counting Twitter and FB followers...for whatever reason. It is very misleading and without a doubt inflates the actual number of true followers. I really wish they would either go back to the old model or give us a button/choice whether we want to use the true subscription number or the inflated one.

    I don't know why they decided on this design change, but I think it was a poor decision and quite honestly misrepresents the subscription numbers on our blogs. Therefore I think a choice whether we keep the inflated numbers or go back to a subscription only number would be nice. :)

  10. ismailimail
    Member

    The last word from support was that they are counting Twitter followers (don't think they said FB). It is really weird because what if your blog is not connected to Twitter or FB?

  11. valentlau
    Member

    I'm not linked to FB etc, so mine must all be subs.

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