Under “Top Posts” what does “views” mean?
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In my blog stats under “top Posts” I might see:
Title Views
Post A 3Post B 2
Post C 1
Post A 1
Does “views” mean how many post were viewed by the person who originally visited
Post A? Does this include the orginally viewed post? 3 total viewed posts or 3 posts viewed in addition to the original post for a total of 4 views.Thanks,
Pam -
It means that particular post was viewed 3 times. As far as I know it doesn’t distinguish between individuals, it just counts clicks.
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Raincoaster,
That is what I thought too but then why would Post A be listed twice under “Top Posts” with a different number of views.Also, when I look at “Search Engine terms” and “Top Posts”
the search term that would lead to looking at specific posts has exactly the same number of views. ie.Search Engine Terms…………..Views———-Top Posts——Views
All about AAAAA ————3————Post A———–7—
All about bbb—————3————Post B————3—
ups and downs of A———-2———-
Ins and outs of C————1————Post C———–1—-
Out of A——————-1————
All about D—————-1————-Post D———–1—-
working AAAA————–1different search terms would have led to viewing Post A. I am just wondering what “Views” really means. Are people really using exactly the same search engine term? or does views mean the number of page views generated by that particular post?
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I really don’t trust any of that data. Are people really typing things like “things have not done lately” into a search engine (this is a real example from my stats)? And why do i show clicks that aren’t even URLs available on my site? And why do my own posts show up in Incoming Links?
I think you should just stick with watching the trend graphs for your own amusement. I use SiteMeter for numbers.
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Yes, they are really typing things like that into search engines. Seriously. I have done the research and just gave a talk on stats. You would be amazed at what people type into search engines; they think it’s the Oracle of Delphi.
There can be more than one URL for a given post, especially if you’ve got the domain name upgrade. If you hover your cursor over each entry, you can see it (at least in my IE6 you can) down in the bottom left hand corner, and you’ll see the differences, like raincoaster.com/what-in-gods-name and raincoaster.wordpress.com/what-in-gods-name and there are other variations as well. They all do reference the same post, though, that’s the important thing. There’s information there about how people came to the post, but unless you’re going to go wild reading the entrails of the stats page you needn’t bother trying to work it out, it’s very esoteric.
I’m not sure I follow the second table, but you seem to be saying that different search strings that should all lead to the same blog post have different numbers, is that right? Different search strings have different success ratios at finding your blog posts, and so do different search engines. My searches right now are virtually all “Helen Mirren Topless” I kid you not, but the reason they have different numbers is that some are in quotations and some from Google and some from MSN and some from Yahoo and some from god-knows-what. They all register as different search results on your stat page.
When you’re seeing near-identity throughout your search string stats, it means that your blog is ranking very, very high in many search engines for that particular search.
Does this make sense? I’ve only had two hours of sleep and am not sure I’m even typing in English at this point.
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Thanks Raincoaster.
I’m not sure I follow the second table, but you seem to be saying that different search strings that should all lead to the same blog post have different numbers, is that right?
Not exactly because two similar searches and their “view” numbers add up to the total views of that post under “Top Posts”
What I am trying to figure out is:
How are the numbers of views listed under the headings of:
Referrer –Search Engine Terms –and Top Posts
relate to the numbers of the views in the line graph?
For instance:
I have 10 total views under Referrers from 6 sources
I have 5 total views under Search Engine Terms from 4 sources
I have 13 total views under Top Post from 10 posts
I have 19 views on the line graph.How are they related? the numbers don’t add up.
I was reading yesterday and I think I understood someone to say that the post on our front page doesn’t count or show up in the Top Posts category until and unless they clicked back to it.
So, perhaps the difference between the numbers for the line graph views and Top Posts are those uncounted views of the first page/post on the blog.
It really doesn’t matter. Just trying to figure out what all the numbers mean.
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I think I have a clue here. Why should they add up?
For instance:
I have 10 total views under Referrers from 6 sources
I have 5 total views under Search Engine Terms from 4 sources
I have 13 total views under Top Post from 10 posts
I have 19 views on the line graph.How are they related? the numbers don’t add up.
Why should they add up?
I sold 19 Pumpkin Pies.
10 Pies to people with coupons from 6 different newspapers.
5 Pies went to people who used Maps from 4 different mapping programs.
13 Pies were popular flavors (but 10 different flavors)We could go on:
6 Pies were unpopular flavors
12 Pies went to people from the neighborhood.But no matter how many new categories, it won’t change the fact you sold 19 pies.
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Thanks davidbale,
I am just trying to figure out why they don’t add up. I think the numbers on the left under Referrers and Search Engine are separate incomings. And they nearly add up to the views under Top Posts. I know it doesn’t really matter.But no matter how many new categories, it won’t change the fact you sold 19 pies.
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david nailed it. And I think that the more popular your blog, the farther apart those columns are going to be.
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Yes. And remember that the majority of your readers only show up in the graph; they may read everything you post (unless you use the ‘click here for more’ thing) but never show in any of the categories.
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