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Why are stats dropping?

  1. davidderrick
    Member

    I saw someone ask this question about their site recently. The issue was immediately fixed when a happiness engineer (Manxman?) dealt with it.

    (How come a single site had problems with its stat readings?)

    Anyhow, I do, too, though not as dramatically. For months even though I do no Facebook or Twitter promotion I would NEVER get a daily reading of under 1000 except occasionally on Saturday. Usually 1500. Now, I am hitting 500 regularly and dropping fast. Does this make sense? I am talking about a real drop of about 70% from levels I was reaching only a few weeks or months ago -- and had been reaching for many months. 70% doesn't seem like a normal fluctuation and it's been sustained. Is it something to do with the malfunctioning of Incoming links? If not, any idea what is causing it?

    Thanks

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

  2. mmadfan
    Member

    Have you checked your Google Webmaster Tools to see whether they are also registering a drop? You could at least know whether the drop was real or whether it was a problem with WP. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en-GB

  3. davidderrick
    Member

    This tool says

    Verification failed for https://davidderrick.wordpress.com/ using the HTML file method (Less than a minute ago). Your verification file was not found.

    ... that's using the "recommended method". Not sure I can be bothered to use any other method. Does this tell us anything?

  4. mmadfan
    Member

    You need to copy the relevant portion of the sitemap xml file info into the field available in your wordpress.com dashboard -- it's under Tools>Available Tools.

    I'll find the link to the wp support docs & post it here (unless someone beats me to it! lol!).

  5. airodyssey
    Member

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/#google-webmaster-tools

  6. davidderrick
    Member

    Thank you. Yawn -- the yawn is not for you!!

  7. mmadfan
    Member

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/

    It's very easy and fast to do, and it can give you some interesting info.

  8. mmadfan
    Member

    ~~airodyssey!

  9. davidderrick
    Member

    I did that ... your message crosed with my last reply to mmadfan. Thanks.

  10. davidderrick
    Member

    Hmmm, but those are precisely the steps I followed. And got the message above.

  11. davidderrick
    Member

    I'll try the Yahoo approach.

  12. mmadfan
    Member

    I wonder why. Maybe airodyssey or someone else has an idea about it.

  13. davidderrick
    Member

    OK, and thanks ... Yahoo says:

    Copy the META tag listed below and paste it in your site's home page:

    <META name="y_key" content="74d14811c4ecb484" />

    The META tag must be within and near the beginning of the first <HEAD> section of the page, and before the first <BODY> section.

    ... Where exactly am I pasting this in? Thanks for your help.

    David

  14. davidderrick
    Member

    airodyssey?

  15. auxclass
    Member

    Dashboard >> Tools

  16. davidderrick
    Member

    Thank you. I pasted it in ... now? I've sort of lost the plot of where this is heading to.

  17. auxclass
    Member

    Go back and request the search engine to verify your site. The search engines need you to prove any particular site is yours, and that is why you need to put their key in it.

  18. davidderrick
    Member

    And then they (Yahoo in tis case) gives me an independent stat service?

  19. auxclass
    Member

    Yahoo etc. won't give you stats, but you can see if there is a problem with how they view your site, crawl errors etc. that might affect if they rank your site high in search results.

    You can add a third party plain html traffic programs to your site if you don't trust the WordPress.COM stats, they will also in some cases give you a bit more info. Timethief has a Post on her site on several she has found.

    As for why the traffic whatever - traffic goes up and traffic goes down - if WordPress.COM gets better at sorting out Spam your drop could be that you are now getting a more honest count, could be some of your regular visitors have gotten tired of reading your site.

  20. davidderrick
    Member

    Sure. I'll take a look at Yahoo.

    Thanks.

  21. timethief
    Member

    We can use non-Javascript third party tracking systems on our free hosted WordPress.com blogs. In all cases make sure you get the correct non-Javascript code:

    1. Visitor tracking on WordPress.com blogs
    2. Real time visitor tracking (non-JavaScript) for blogs
    3. getclicky real time stats for wordpress.com blogs

    1. davidderrick
      Member

      OK, thanks. Is this likely to be more accurate than what WP build in?

    2. auxclass
      Member

      No two stats packages will agree, even if they are on the same server. Depends on how the stats sorts out spam and bots etc.

      Counting individual views is a waste of time in my opinion - watch the trend over the long term.

    3. davidderrick
      Member

      Thanks. ... I am and it's down!

    4. timethief
      Member

      auxclass is right. WordPress stats and all the others will never agree. Each one of them decides how and what they will count as a hit. Some count page views and some count unique visitors. Therefore, use any of the stats counters only as a general guide to hits.

      Understand that an application that is not running on the same servers your blog is on is going to be susceptible to wild fluctuations. This is because all hits have to be transferred over the internet to different servers, and there are literally thousands of things that can go wrong between the server your blog is on and the server at the stats place.

      Also be aware of the possibility that the software or hardware at the stats place may be broken and not recording, or counting things as intended.

    5. timethief
      Member

      @davidderrick
      When blog stats drop the best way to bring them back up is through engaging your reader community and this can be accomplished by by "comment baiting". See here > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/03/21/blogging-comment-baiting/ I have a friend who is an academic and her blog was doing very well for moths then the stats fell. What she did not take into consideration was here demographics. Those who were here readers were in the main students so when summer break arrived the stats fell. If you want to explore your demographics and other useful metrics see here > http://qoantcast.com and http://alexa.com (quantcast is data is more reliable than alexa).

    6. timethief
      Member

      Nerts! Sorry :( here's the correct link http://quancast.com

    7. mmadfan
      Member

      ~~tt!

      Typing can be nutty sometimes, but don't you mean http://quantcast.com with a "t"? I don't use it, so I'm not sure, but the other link doesn't look right . . . Hope you're well! (I just glanced over your comment baiting post & will have to peruse it more deeply later -- it's something I'm really bad at, and since I never really intended to actually "blog" and suddenly found myself doing it for what began as a very specific purpose -- announcements for a smallish group of people -- and now I feel as though I really need to be doing more with it, and more for readers just beyond that original small group, since I get more and more traffic through search engine referrals.)

    8. timethief
      Member

      @mmadfan
      Yes that's the link ... **headesk*** thank you for posting it.

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