Asking my readers a favor – Part 1

Edited to Add: I’ve already reported on the experiment, so no need to perform the test. Thank you.

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That’s right . . . me, who is very reluctant to ask for anything, is asking for a favor. 

A short background as to why . . . 

Every once in a while, the Statistic for the blog show some anomalies. A few days ago was one such — although it wasn’t unique — and I got curious; curious enough to ask the Happiness Engineers.  Let me explain . . . 

. . . but first, a photo . . . 

The photo has nothing to do with the favor; I’m just throwing it in here because I’m also using the new less-intrusive watermark. If it’s working like it should, most people will miss it. 

Anyway, back to the background for my request . . . If you don’t care about the background, please scroll down to the request. 

A few days ago, I happened to notice the number of Total Views for the day was (at the time) 124. The number of Visitors for the day (at the time) was 43. The Stats also list the Posts & Pages Views. Something didn’t look right and I added up the individual views for the individual posts and it came up to 54 . . . 70 less than the total views. Typically, the Total Views number is pretty close to what you get when you add all the individual Posts & Pages Views.  

This has happened before. One day I had over 300 Total Views and the sum of my Posts & Pages Views was something like 90 for about 60 Visitors. 

Here’s the thing . . . those numbers don’t make sense based on what I’ve been told regarding how visitors and views are counted. 

To make a long story short, I got into an e-mail exchange with the Happiness Engineers (three different individuals) who attempted to explain how that was possible. Except, by their own explanation, it was — if not impossible — at least highly improbable.

I’ll spare you the lengthy discussions but the bottom line — from my point of view — is that either someone is reading the blog without registering as a Visitor or triggering the Post & Page Views counter — which should be impossible — OR the system WordPress uses to count stuff is flawed.  

I personally believe the latter since a long time ago (when it was still allowed) I used to get statistics from Google Analytics and a few other services that tracked stuff like that. Those numbers never matched WordPress numbers. Which is weird since if you want to monetize the site, the payout is based on visitors and views. 

To make a long story short, one of the explanations I got was that if people looked at the Home Page/Archive, that counts as just one Posts & Pages Views but each post they read adds to the Total Views.

This to me doesn’t make sense because the stats count the Home Page/Archive views (for the day in question, there were 6). That means that a number of people read many posts by scrolling down the Home Page without once stopping to click on any posts (clicking on a post would trigger a post count). It also means that people were really interested in a lot of posts but opted not to open and Comment or even “Like” any of them. 

But, how would WordPress know they are reading a post or just looking at the sidebar or just scrolling? In other words, how are they counting these supposed extra views without people actually opening up the posts? 

So, I devised a test, hence . . . 

The Request:

If you have a minute or so, click on THIS link (it’s my home page) and then just scroll down (hit page-down or use the mouse wheel) for a bit (a minute, if you have the time). However long you want (the screen will just keep scrolling). It may hang for a moment but just keep scrolling. 

If you prefer, click on THIS link (it’s my Archive) and scroll down for a spell.

I’m testing if what the Happiness Engineers say is true. If it is, and even if only a few readers do as I ask, I should have a crapload of Total Views and very few individual Posts & Pages Views.

Thank you and here are two more photos for you. 

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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Note: if you are not reading this blog post at DisperserTracks.com, know that it has been copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intention, like attracting you to a malware-infested website.  Could be they also torture small mammals.

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