For Matt: An unusually large uptick in stats without any reasons

  • ismailimail · Member ·

    As per Matt’s suggestion here.

    Here is the screen shot from my blog’s stats which shows an unusual bump in traffic but absolutely no explanation as to where it is coming from.

    Weeks view: http://ismailimail.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/stats-bump.jpg

    Here is 30 days referrer links, note the numbers gathered by wordpress.com

    It would be helpful to know:

    1) Why was there a wordpress.com as a referrer so such a large number of hits?
    2) Is there a possibility of removing these stats if they are not real.
    3) If these stats are real, than why did they disappear after a week?
    4) What is the explanation behind this message of yours when you said our stats were historically undercounted? And what is that you were going to fix ASAP?
    5) What is this “new change” referred here by macmanx of your staff.

    At the end of the day, I don’t mind getting a bump in traffic, but this bump needs an explanation and it eventually needs to normalize the past stats data (and now the future one). I hope you realize that this unusually large uptick causes the historical stats data to be useless and the future one to be a suspect.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    I’m with you Ismailimail. I can understand that there was a problem, and that people said it was being addressed, but for the life of me I can’t understand the weeks of silence since. I am not assigning blame in any way — I’d just like to be able to sort my stats out so they are reliable.

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    Matt: I don’t have a screen shot but I will give you an anecdotal scenario., For a period of a week, I was getting about 400-500 hits a day from WordPress.com referrer — I’d never seen it before and have not seen it since. The total approached about 2,000 hits in my case — given that the months before showed zero and there have been none since, it seems this was an aberration that should be explained. Sorry about my previous post — I had not seen your response on the much longer thread regarding this issue.

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    Matt: Here are a couple of days stats from my blog which illustrate the extent of the problem (I don’t see any point in sending the whole week, but would do that if you need it):

    http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats&blog=6088923&day=2011-10-19

    http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats&blog=6088923&day=2011-10-20

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    Matt: Here are a couple of days stats from my blog which illustrate the extent of the problem (I don’t see any point in sending the whole week, but would do that if you need it):

    http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats&blog=6088923&day=2011-10-19

    http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats&blog=6088923&day=2011-10-20

  • tessf · Member ·

    I had that happen to my blog too. A couple of weeks ago actually. ..
    Same story. Stats jumped up for about seven days in a row. ..until I bought the domain. ..then they crashed. . .and the referrer was wordpress.com.

  • ismailimail · Member ·

    I am not sure if Matt wanted all of us to report our issues individually on different threads, but I just wish to make sure that my first message doesn’t get lost amid many others posting their own. I think it wouldn’t hurt if you follow Matt’s advise and create a separate thread of your own by adding that specific tag as he has asked (formatt). This way, you will be ensured that your issues are being tracked.

    However, I have no issues if Matt can investigate everyone together via this thread.

  • ismailimail · Member ·

    Sorry, I just realized that this issue was affecting many people collectively, so it would make no sense to have separate threads for each person. I take my above comment back. But I think it would be best if we provide details with screenshots and all, so Matt can see where exactly we are coming from and why.

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    I apologize for hitting a Send button twice, producing a distracting double post. I figured two screens was enough to illustrate what my problem was with swamping Matt. I agree that we should be careful about just how much we load on him — the issue seems fairly simple and I can’t understand why it has taken WordPress so long to address it.

  • ingridcc · Member ·

    I think all the screen shots are a little too much detail! Matt, what this is (and was) all about was not whether individual people were happy or upset about that week-long temporary jump in stats coming from WordPress.com referrers.

    It was about–initially–the mystery of that unbalanced jump in total stats (yet not in page/post views) and then the information from you that our stats had been historically undercounted, and now were about to be more accurately counted, but that a glitch was (presumably) causing the newly counted views to show in the referrer and total views tallies, yet not show up in our post-and-page-view stats.

    I too would like to know if there really has been a change if any in how views are being counted by WordPress now—right at that time of the “WordPress as referrer” mystery jump in stats, my very small-time blog was suddenly getting some more exposure thru various circles and I’d like to have a sense of how much of the new traffic I’m getting is from that vs how much from a new way stats are being gathered/ assessed…

    Thanks!

  • ismailimail · Member ·

    ingridcc, I’d agree with you and I believe this individual investigation idea of Matt is an overkill, given that there are many people who were affected by this change. I am also trying to have Support investigate another issue which I believe is affecting several others at the same time, so it is odd, but as an individual blogger, I give benefit of the doubt and do my own due-diligence to report things in detail.

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    I agree that once Matt finds an explanation for one blog it will probably apply to the many others that were affected (you will recall from the now closed origiinal thread that many people were concerned). I don’t think giving him a few screens to consider is too much detail at all — simply an indication that this was a widespread problem that probably has a fairly simple explanation. Something went wrong for about a week (stats before and since that week have been quite consistent) — I’d just like to be able to adjust my numbers so I know they are accurate.

  • matt · Staff ·

    Lots of questions floating around in this thread, I’ll try to summarize:

    * A jump that huge looks like a bug, it’s very difficult to go back and see what caused it but I’ll see what we can do.
    * Referrals from WP.com might be freshly pressed, tag pages, the reader, people subscribing to you by email.
    * The unusual spikes we saw and enabled and then turned off were from syndicated views, from RSS and similar, not sure yet why for some people they’re unusually high.

  • cheeptalk · Member ·

    Why did you turn off rss stats? It would be good to have those.

  • kevinfromcanada · Member ·

    Isamailimail: Have you had any response? I cerntainly have not. It has been six days now since Matt’s response and we still see nothing on something that obviously has a simple explanation.

    Let’s keep this thread alive. We deserve an answer.

  • ismailimail · Member ·

    I have closed this chapter. The response from Matt is obvious above. This is not going to go anywhere and it is only personally aggravating.

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